Source: AP
An anonymous official has told the Associated Press that the Obama administration will sign a U.N. declaration calling for the world-wide decriminalization of homosexuality.
“The United States is an outspoken defender of human rights and critic of human rights abuses around the world,” said one official.
“As such, we join with the other supporters of this statement and we will continue to remind countries of the importance of respecting the human rights of all people in all appropriate international fora,” the official said.
The official added that the United States was concerned about “violence and human rights abuses against gay, lesbian, transsexual and bisexual individuals” and was also “troubled by the criminalization of sexual orientation in many countries.”
“In the words of the United States Supreme Court, the right to be free from criminalization on the basis of sexual orientation ‘has been accepted as an integral part of human freedom’,” the official said.
With the recent, horrendous anti-gay conference in Uganda as a backdrop, this is indeed good news. The declaration may not have any legal teeth, but it is a strong first step internationally, and one that the US was unwilling to take just a few months ago.
This also places official US policy at odds with Holocaust revisionist Scott Lively, who agrees with criminalization of homosexuality, which he says will preserve a “family-centered” society.
The Bush administration would not sign the statement for fear of violating states’ rights, or so they claimed. This is a great sign that the world is beginning to take the issue seriously with the U.S. (finally) joining the Europeans’ lead. It would have been great to have seen reparative therapy condemned in this statement, but one step at a time I guess.
I’m not sure I ever understood that argument, at least post 2003. Homosexual sex between consenting adults is legal in the entire country at this point. The declaration doesn’t have any actually meaning in law, so again, doesn’t make sense. If a country that proclaims freedom and democracy above all else can’t stand behind a simple declaration like this, then it’s all a sham anyway — particularly heading into the second decade of the 21st Century.
“States Rights” has always been a euphemism for “legalized discrimination” anyway.
George W. Bush supported the Texas sodomy statute. That is the reason that he did not want to declare the criminalization of homosexuality as wrong in the international arena. I think it is important for us not to forget which side people took in the Lawrence v. Texas and Bowers v. Hardwick cases.