Withers: Social conservatives fight against UN recognition of gay rights group

Two Republicans from Congress, New Jersey’s Rep. Christopher H. Smith and Arizona’s Rep. Trent Franks, are standing arm in arm with a coalition of Islamic countries to deny United Nations’ non-governmental  recognition to a gay and lesbian group.

On Monday the Obama Administration will petition the the 54-member UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to grant International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC) “consultative status.” This recognition will give the organization the right to sit in on UN meetings. In June Egypt, Angola, Burundi, China, Pakistan, Qatar, Russia and Sudan requested the NGO Committee to block the US request. Egypt’s rep was worried if a preacher man denounced same sex couples he could be hunted down.

Smith and Franks, in a July 9 letter to the UN,  used that same “logic,” noting they had “serious questions regarding the IGLHRC’s support for the internationally recognized rights to freedom of religion and freedom of expression remain outstanding in the NGO committee. Consequently, a forced, premature action in ECOSOC to approve IGLHRC would potentially undermine these important rights. As well as the long established due process for NGO review.”

The folk at IGLHRC accuse Franks and Smith of being full of it. Well they say it with more class. The spokesperson for Susan Rice, the United States ambassador to the UN, refused to respond directly to the fussing of Smith and Franks. Instead he argued that IGLHRC is involved in the very thing the UN is supposed to be about: human rights.

“The United States is determined to make U.N. committees live up to their founding principles and be true to the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. The purpose of the NGO committee is to give civil society a strong voice at the UN, and that includes the important contributions that gay and lesbian groups like IGLHRC can make on issues like human rights and combating HIV/AIDS.”

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