U.S. Endorses UN Homosexuality Declaration

The Obama administration announced March 18 its support for a United Nations declaration urging the global decriminalization of homosexuality three months after the Bush administration refused to endorse it.

The news, reported by the Associated Press, marked a reversal in the United States’ position on a non-binding measure considered by the U.N. General Assembly Dec. 18. At that time, 66 countries backed the barrier-breaking declaration, while more than 50 opposed it and the remainder of the 192 members abstained, according to The New York Times.

“The United States supports the U.N.’s statement on human rights, sexual orientation and gender identity and is pleased to join the other 66 U.N. member states who have declared their support of the statement,” State Department spokesman Robert Wood said, according to AP.

“The United States is an outspoken defender of human rights and critic of human rights abuses around the world,” Wood said. “As such, we join with 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 U.N. declaration goes beyond decriminalization, according to the Family Research Council (FRC). “It condemns not only ‘violence’ and ‘harassment,’ but also ’stigmatization and prejudice,’ terms which some would apply to any disapproval of homosexual conduct, no matter how peaceful and loving,” FRC President Tony Perkins wrote in his March 18 “Washington Update” e-mail.

via Baptist Press – U.S. endorses homosexuality – News with a Christian Perspective.

United Nations’ Threat: No More Parental Rights

A United Nations human rights treaty that could prohibit children from being spanked or homeschooled, ban youngsters from facing the death penalty and forbid parents from deciding their families’ religion is on America’s doorstep, a legal expert warns.

Michael Farris of Purcellville, Va., is president of ParentalRights.org, chairman of the Home School Legal Defense Association and chancellor of Patrick Henry College. He told WND that under the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, or CRC, every decision a parent makes can be reviewed by the government to determine whether it is in the child’s best interest.

“It’s definitely on our doorstep,” he said. “The left wants to make the Obama-Clinton era permanent. Treaties are a way to make it as permanent as stuff gets. It is very difficult to extract yourself from a treaty once you begin it. If they can put all of their left-wing socialist policies into treaty form, we’re stuck with it even if they lose the next election.”

The 1990s-era document was ratified quickly by 193 nations worldwide, but not the United States or Somalia. In Somalia, there was then no recognized government to do the formal recognition, and in the United States there’s been opposition to its power. Countries that ratify the treaty are bound to it by international law.

via United Nations’ threat: No more parental rights.