(LifeSiteNews) – The United Nations has announced an upcoming report positing a new framework for thinking about the tensions between religious freedom and LGBT interests, which religious freedom experts predict will give advocates of the latter a new tool for diminishing the former.
Last month, the UN issued a call for “all interested States, civil society organizations, faith-based institutions, faith leaders, academics, international organizations, national human rights institutions, activists, corporations, and others” to give feedback on a UN Independent Expert report on “freedom of religion or belief (FoRB) and sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI),” slated for release in June.
“The report will examine long-established and emerging discourses driving perceived contradictions between FoRB and freedom from violence and discrimination based on SOGI, with reference to legal concepts such as conscientious objection, reasonable accommodation for religious beliefs, and anti-discrimination law and public policies,” the announcement says. It will explore the “potential for the two to limit one another, as well as synergies between the two frameworks,” ultimately to “provide legal and political narratives to shift away from zero-sum analysis and to reconcile the theoretical bases for due enjoyment of human rights by all persons.”
The announcement is written with a heavy presumption that affirmation of religious freedom impairs LGBT “rights,” with negative influence in the opposite direction ignored. It also claims that “many anti-LGBT+ attitudes apparent in some strands of religious belief systems today are of relatively recent origin,” and that many religious denominations “have embraced (or re-embraced) LGBT+ identities and consider freedom from violence and discrimination based on SOGI as an essential tenant of their faith.”
“The IE SOGI’s thematic report aims to introduce voices from LGBT-inclusive belief systems, indigenous communities, and LGBT+ communities of faith as key stakeholders,” the UN says. “The IE SOGI also intends to open a space within human rights discourse and practice to better recognize and protect LGBT+ persons’ access to faith and spirituality, as persons free and equal in dignity and rights, and their access to spirituality in accordance with their own right to freedom of religion or belief.”
The radical LGBT agenda infiltrating the Catholic Church is persecuting another brave priest, who now desperately needs your help to speak on his behalf.
Fr. Joachim Wernersbach has been SUSPENDED by his abbot of the Benedictine Tholey Abbey for preaching against gender ideology and the heterodox Synodal Way — pushed by Pope Francis and the German Synod of Bishops.
Fr. Wernersbach is also suspended from performing pastoral activists in the surrounding parish, and is being subject to “an ecclesiastical investigation.”
We need everyone to speak up for suspended priest Fr. Wernersbach — the LGBT agenda cannot claim another brave and devout priest.
SIGN and SHARE now.
Pro-life and pro-family priests around the world are being silenced and cancelled, while pro-LGBT activists get hand-written letters from the Pope, like Fr. James Martin.
Fr. Wernersbach simply reiterated Catholic teaching in his Christmas homily: "You hear about gender and transgender, transhumanism and reproductive health, wokeness and LGBTQ, diversity and identity. Of multiple genders and gender reassignment, plus this devastating new understanding of revelation from the Synodal Way," he said.
"My dear friends, even the terms are absolutely disturbing. They all have one thing in common: they lack beauty, they lack coherence, and they lack naturalness. They are not aligned, not in harmony with the inconceivably beautiful Divine Order."
For this denunciation of anti-Catholic trends, Fr. Wernersbach has been suspended by his own abbot. The entire homily has also been removed from YouTube.
The systematic persecution of pro-life and pro-family priests must end now.
Demand that Fr. Wernersbach be restored to full priestly ministry and demand that his superiors STOP shilling for the LGBT agenda!
Good and faithful priests are being systematically cancelled — but you can raise your voice to stop the attacks.
SIGN NOW before it’s too late.
Fr. Wernersbach needs your voice!
MORE INFORMATION:
German priest punished by superiors for preaching against gender ideology, Synodal Way
Over the weekend, the Daily Caller published reactions from religion and family experts warning about what they see as the planned report’s true purpose.
“My biggest concern is the premise of the report which seems to suggest that freedom of religion and rights based on sexual orientation are the same,” said Grace Melton, senior associate of the Heritage Foundation’s Richard and Helen DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family. “But certainly as a function of international law, they are not the same. Freedom of religion or belief, or freedom of conscience, is an internationally protected human right. It’s codified in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which is a legally binding treaty.”
“Despite saying that we shouldn’t have these rights pitted against one another, but when you keep reading on you see that the author of the report really does see [rights and religion] as being in conflict,” added Andrea Picciotti-Bayer, a fellow at Catholic University of America’s Institute for Human Ecology. “I think it’s important that the foundation of the question of human rights is that these are universally shared rights, that we share not by nature of any affinities but because of our humanity and the right to religious freedom … that’s a right that each and every human being possesses.”
“This narrative is not only harmful because it could make people doubt the importance of religion in their own lives and their communities, but it’s also harmful because it will undermine really important social protection,” she continued. “Religion and religious freedom is a stabilizing presence, and for the cases where religion is being misused to oppress, the answer isn’t to shut down religion entirely.”