By James Tillman

NEW YORK, July 20, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Yesterday the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) was granted consultative non-governmental organization (NGO) status at the UN, after the U.S. helped the group side-step the UN’s NGO Committee, whose approval is normally necessary to gain such status.

The White House issued a statement from President Obama stating that the IGLHRC’s admission was an “important step forward for human rights,” and that the “more full inclusion” of the ILGHRC moved the UN “closer to the ideals on which it was founded, and to values of inclusion and equality to which the United States is deeply committed.”

The US-based “gay rights” organization has sought consultative status since 2007. Normally, to gain such status NGOs pass through the UN’s NGO Committee.

In June, however, when an Egyptian delegate in the NGO Committee asked whether one of IGLHRC’s positions on “gay rights” could threaten the rights to freedom of religion and freedom of expression, the U.S. delegate forestalled examination of the group by calling for an immediate vote to accredit it.

Egypt shot back by saying that its question had not been answered and by asking for a procedural “no action” vote in response to the U.S. attempt. The Egyptian motion passed, with the support of Angola, Burundi, China, Pakistan, Qatar, Russia and Sudan.

The United States, however, decided to bypass the NGO Committee by bringing up a vote on the IGLHRC application at the July Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) meeting.

U.S. House Representatives Chris Smith and Trent Franks, on discovering the plan to bypass the NGO Committee, wrote a letter to U.N. members in which they said that “a forced, premature action in the ECOSOC to approve the IGLHRC would potentially undermine these important rights [freedom of religion and freedom of expression], as well as the long established due process for NGO review.”

They pointed out that the IGLHRC has said that states should ensure “that the exercise of freedom of opinion and expression does not violate the rights and freedoms of persons of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities.”

The statement was a quotation from the controversial Yogyakarta Principles, which the pro-life and pro-family group C-FAM has argued undermine parental authority, religious freedom, and national sovereignty.

“The problem is not one more homosexual group agitating for their agenda at the UN,” Austin Ruse, President of the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute (C-FAM), told LifeSiteNews.com (LSN) about the IGLHRC gaining NGO status. “The problem is that this group endorses something called the Yogyakarta Principles which calls for criminal sanctions against those who criticize the homosexual agenda.”

He continued: “This document calls for homosexual rights to trump freedom of religion and freedom of speech. In short, this group does not adhere to the basic tenets of the United Nations as expressed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the UN Charter.”

Smith and Franks have pointed out that an Egyptian delegate had asked the IGLHRC whether it thought that a religious preacher should be prosecuted for teaching that any sexual relations but those between a man and a woman in marriage are wrong.

“The IGLHRC has yet to answer this extremely important question,” Smith and Franks say in their July 9th letter. “Unless and until the IGLHRC chooses to answer this important question,” they continued, they should be denied special consultative status.

After the U.S. brought the matter to a vote, however, the 54-member ECOSOC granted the IGLHRC’s application for consultative status by a vote of 23-13, with 13 abstentions and 5 absences.

“The victory continues the upward trajectory for LGBT rights at the UN,” said the IGLHRC press release. There are nine other homosexualist activist NGOs at the UN. The UN has supported “gay pride” events around the world and has given awards to homosexualist activists.

Austin Ruse told LSN that it is “sad and disturbing that during a time of war, during a time when the U.S. is under attack from global terror network, that the Obama Administration has made advancing the homosexual agenda one of their top foreign policy priorities.”

“Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has directed every US Embassy in the world to actively support homosexual activists in those countries,” he continued.

The United States has previously supported the entrance of homosexualist NGOs that had been rejected by the NGO Committee into the UN, even during the Bush administration.

According to the AP, U.S. deputy ambassador Rosemary DiCarlo said that the NGO Committee has not granted consultative status to a gay or lesbian organization for more than a decade. Several Muslim countries on the NGO Committee have helped block any such action.

Among the nations that voted for the IGLHRC’s admission in ECOSOC were the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Poland, Malta, Liechtenstein, Italy, Germany, France, Australia, Brazil, and Argentina.

Saudi Arabia, Morocco, the Russian Federation, Malaysia, Egypt, and 8 other countries voted against it.

See related stories on LifeSiteNews.com:

Three Homosexual Activist Groups Gain Previously Denied UN Consultative Status
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/dec/06121404.html

United States Backs UN NGO Status for Homosexual Activist Groups Once Associated with Pedophiles
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/may/06051902.html

Two International Gay Associations Denied Membership Status with UN
https://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/jan/06012402.html