Monday, December 8, 2008

Action Needed on UN Declaration Calling for Global Decriminalization of Homosexuality

The declaration to make imprisonment and the death penalty illegal for homosexuality will be put before the UN General Assembly this coming Wednesday, which coincidentally is Human Rights Day and the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. While every country in the European Union has signed on and Canada is a sponsor.

The United States of America has not signaled support for the declaration.

Homosexuality is still illegal in 85 countries, and a handful of countries will give imprisonment sentences of life and/or the death penalty.

Please head over to the Mike Tidmus blog for a detailed list of actions we can take, we must act quick.

8 comments:

Unknown said...

America's position on this subject matter does NOT surprise me

Queers United said...

not with Bolton, I wouldn't even be surprised if they find a way to vote against it.

Anonymous said...

You would get a wide support on issues like this, if the gay community was not a rebid dog. straight people understand this, it's reasonable, they don't want gay people hurt. But they fear any alliance because of your over the top bad Behavior. It's hard to help a rabid dog even when you would like to. We know that any relief you get will eventually be used to bash straight people, churches, etc..

Queers United said...

Yeah, it's cool we also misrepresent and paint a broadbrush on the "heterosexual lifestyle" every killer, sex offender, and criminal of any sort who is a "heterosexual" must be representative of the entire "straight" community's bad behavior.

naturgesetz said...

I've been looking for the actual text of the resolution, and so far, I can't find it anywhere. (Googled "France UN resolution" and one at a time added "homosexuality" and "text" and nothing appeared to be offering the actual text of the resolution.) So here we have a bunch of people working themselves into a fury insisting on something when they don't even know what it actually says. Talk about irrational!

http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0806042.htm

It seems that it could be vague and the sort of thing which people could invoke for lots more than just to keep homosexuals from being executed or jailed.

Remember that in Massachusetts, several decades ago a human rights amendment was proposed. The proponents assured the voters that it would not authorize same-sex marriage. Decades later the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court said to the voters, "Surprise! The joke's on you. That amendment that they told you would not authorize same-sex marriage — well it really does authorize it."

Anybody who supports anything having to do with human rights without reading the actual text and parsing every word carefully and trying to imagine how people may try to use it is a fool.

Unknown said...

Anonymous, for every oppressed community, there comes a moment of awakening. That moment has now come for LGBT people. A population that was once divided between a minority of visible and politically involved people and a majority of closeted, self-loathing people has undergone a transformation over the last decade or so. Millions of ordinary LGBT folks now would face violence and even death before returning to the closet. Anger and hurt once turned inward will now be turned outward unless it can be channeled into a clear and credible strategy for achieving equality under the law. A lot depends on an emerging leadership within the LGBT community that can articulate such a strategy, and a lot depends on how effective that leadership can be given the degree of ignorance and misunderstanding even among our traditional "friends." We've all got to roll up our sleeves, or the rapid dog metaphor, currently an overstatement, may in fact become apt.

Armando MorĂ¡n said...

Probably the rabid dog metaphor that Anonymous used, was not the most appropriate to create a climate of dialogue of understanding.

However, his point is valid. Here in California, we gave generous domestic partnership rights to the lgbt community, and they only used them as a springboard to fight for same sex marriage.

This doggone obsession with the word marriage, instead of fighting for federally recognized civil unions, is what is causing a backlash.

Anonymous said...

It's a doggone obsession with equality, instead of settling for separate but equal.

The only "backlash" is caused by ignorance and bigotry, not by a fight for equality.

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