Gord's Notebook : America Still A Rogue State Refuses to Sign UN Declaration Calling For Decriminalization of Homosexuality; Some People Are More Equal Than Others

UPDATE: 3pm Dec. 20,2008
& 4: 19 PM.
Anyway issues of the day-

...According to some of the declaration's backers, U.S. officials expressed concern in private talks that some parts of the declaration might be problematic in committing the federal government on matters that fall under state jurisdiction. In numerous states, landlords and private employers are allowed to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation; on the federal level, gays are not allowed to serve openly in the military.

Above quote From:December 19, 2008 by the Associated Press
"US Balks at Backing Condemnation of Anti-Gay Laws"by David Crary

America and Islamic Extremists Against Gay Rights

UN divided over gay rights-Dec. 2008

America refuses to condemn anti-gay laws-
Gay Rights are not equivalent to human rights according to Americans?
Compare to Civil Rights Movement and the Equal Rights women-
America a Rogue Nation which is anti-human rights except mainly for Wealthy White Heterosexual Americans -
Sovereignty of other nations and International Laws not recognized by American Governments or The American Military Pentagon and CIA -

America Still A Country Not in Favor of Equal Rights for all of its citizens. Like the Taleban and other Islamic extremists they refuse to recognize equal rights for Gays and Lesbians. They do not want to sign on to such an agreement because one can only assume that they believe their tolerance for Gays is limited . And that these are not really rights but privileges that can just as easily be taken away. For the most part this appears to be the attitude of White Christian Americans towards all other groups . So if they want to discriminate against blacks or Hispanics or Muslims or Jews or other non-Christians or against the poor or women that's America's business and the rest of the world can go and mind its own business.This shouldn't be much of a surprise given that Americans are still reluctant to pass the Equal Rights Amendment which would give equal rights to women in America. There is still a significant proportion of Americans who believe that the ERA would undermine American society and destroy Family Values. Heaven forbid that Americans be forced to treat women as equals. If anything over the past eight years the Bush Regime has been chipping away at the gains in equality made by American women . One should remember that the rights which women were granted were a result of over a century of women fighting for those rights .

African-Americans also had to fight to have their rights protected. It was not simply a matter of outlawing slavery and then African-Americans were granted equal rights but rather a matter of the battles and demonstrations of the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s which put pressure on the government to pass Civil Rights legislation and even this did not end some forms of segregation or put an end to various forms of discrimination as in housing , employment or admittance to Universities or running for public office and discrimination has continued in the way that Blacks are treated by law enforcement agencies and the courts and the whole apparatus of the Criminal justice system . Of course some of the forms of discrimination became more subtle and less obvious. Racism still exists in the United States.

The United States once again votes against protecting human rights in this case for Gays. While some are surprised they shouldn't be America has often been at odds with the UN over various human rights issues as it has been in regards to the Death Penalty, women's equality or in areas such as the use of cluster bombs , land mines or the use of torture or in contravening the law regarding War crimes or Crimes against humanity. Under the Bush Regime and under former US administrations America has claimed that it is not bound by any ruling by the United Nations or by any International Agreements and still refuses to recognize The World Court. Yet representatives of the US government claim they object to any human rights violations against people just for their sexual orientation but refuse to do anything to protect the rights of Gays and Lesbians or the rights of other minorities claiming the individual states have jurisdiction over many of these issues. Wasn't this the argument that the pro-slave states claimed before the Civil War and later many states made segregation the law of the land and claimed the federal government had no right to interfere with the state's right to prevent African-Americans from being treated as equals. So from a short time after the American Civil War a number of states implemented Segregation & the Jim Crow Laws combined with Lynchings and the impunity given to organizations such as the KKK and local officials to take the law into their own hands . But we are not supposed to talk about these dark periods in American history. The neocons and the Neo-liberals and all those who prefer the fantasy of the history of America in which everyone had equal rights from the very beginning of the formation of the United States of America.

Well in the early days only white males who owned property had the right to vote . White women would not get the right to vote or to be treated as equals until 1920s and even today women find themselves still not treated as equals .It is not until the 1980s that women were permitted to enter various professions in numbers rivaling their male counterparts.ie law, medicine , sciences , engineering . African Americans were not given full rights under the law until the mid 1960s. For most of America's history Racism,. sexism, and homophobia have been the core of America's values. Yes now more white women are able to achieve almost as much as their white male counterparts though they can still be paid less for doing the same job as their male counterparts and often find themselves not promoted as quickly as their male counterparts based it appears on the fact of having different sexual organs. Unfortunately many of these white women are like their male counterparts no more in favor of extending these rights to the various visual minorities . As white males have felt that only they should have human rights and believed that white women should not be given the same rights as white men. After all women are not as smart as men or are more emotionally unstable than men are. The white Supremacists often claim that common sense and even science has proved that Whites are superior to Black and Hispanics etc.

During the Civil Rights era in 1950s and 1960s white women were as likely as White Male to oppose extending these rights to African Americans or Hispanics or other minority groups. And these days since the election of Barack Obama conservative Americans falsely claim that now suddenly and magically there is no racism and no racial discrimination in the United States.

December 19, 2008 by the Associated Press
"US Balks at Backing Condemnation of Anti-Gay Laws"by David Crary

UNITED NATIONS - Alone among major Western nations, the United States has refused to sign a declaration presented Thursday at the United Nations calling for worldwide decriminalization of homosexuality.

...66 of the U.N.'s 192 member countries signed the nonbinding declaration - which backers called a historic step to push the General Assembly to deal more forthrightly with any-gay discrimination. More than 70 U.N. members outlaw homosexuality, and in several of them homosexual acts can be punished by execution.
Co-sponsored by France and the Netherlands, the declaration was signed by all 27 European Union members, as well as Japan, Australia, Mexico and three dozen other countries. There was broad opposition from Muslim nations, and the United States refused to sign, indicating that some parts of the declaration raised legal questions that needed further review.

(AND NOTE:)
...According to some of the declaration's backers, U.S. officials expressed concern in private talks that some parts of the declaration might be problematic in committing the federal government on matters that fall under state jurisdiction. In numerous states, landlords and private employers are allowed to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation; on the federal level, gays are not allowed to serve openly in the military.

Carolyn Vadino, a spokeswoman for the U.S. mission to the U.N., stressed that the United States - despite its unwillingness to sign - condemned any human rights violations related to sexual orientation.

Gay rights activists nonetheless were angered by the U.S. position.
"It's an appalling stance - to not join with other countries that are standing up and calling for decriminalization of homosexuality," said Paula Ettelbrick, executive director of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission.
She expressed hope that the U.S. position might change after President-elect Barack Obama takes office in January.

Also denouncing the U.S. stance was Richard Grenell, who until two months ago had been the chief spokesman for the U.S. mission to the U.N.

"It is ridiculous to suggest that there are legal reasons why we can't support this resolution - common sense says we should be the leader in making sure other governments are granting more freedoms for their people, not less," said Grenell, who described himself as a gay Republican. "The U.S. lack of support on this issue only dims our once bright beacon of hope and freedom for those who are persecuted and oppressed."

More than 50 countries opposed to the declaration, including members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, issued a joint statement Thursday criticizing the initiative as an unwarranted attempt to give special prominence to gays and lesbians. The statement suggested that protecting sexual orientation could lead to "the social normalization and possibly the legalization of deplorable acts" such as pedophilia and incest.

Also see:From Huffington Post article by John Ridley "The U.S. Goes Global With Its Anti-Gayness" Dec. 19, 2008

and for a sampling of Evangelical views on the Rights of Homosexuals which they see as an attack on the traditional Family Values and on America see:

On Gay Rights & Sexual Deviance & Family Values see:

Reformation Online.com December 20, 2008 Mom and Dad R.I.P. by Eunice V. Ray First Principles

also see:

at Donald E. Wildmon's American Family Association
The Homosexual Agenda

Anyway ,For the moment assume that the rights of Gays were to be protected by the World Court or the United Nations and that this was not merely some toothless declaration would America abide by it then- I think Not-

and as Michelle Malkin that great defender of freedom who wrote an apologetic for the Japanese-American Internment Camps and believes like other conservatives ie Ann Coulter etc. that African-Americans should be thankful for being transported as slaves to a Christian Nation .So she makes plain The World Court and The International Court have no jurisdiction over US State Governments nor over America's Federal Government. So according to Malkin a state could commit what amounts to a crime Against Humanity or a War Crime but So What- If the NAZIs had only had experts like her and Ann Coulter working for them the Nuremberg Trials would never have occurred thereby defending in her view the Sovereignty of any Nation or any state or province or I guess any town or city within that Nation. If a particulat town government wants to oust or imprison a certain minority which they happen to hate then according to her logic so be it. Would she make the same argument if a state decided to reinstitute Racial Segregetion or even slavery. Of course she is really just taliking about the Sovereignty of America and its states not other countries which have no rights over their own sovereignty.

Hey, World Court: Bug off!By Michelle Malkin • July 16, 2008

As Malkin argues:

They just won’t stop meddling with our sovereignty. The weenies on the World Court are leaning on their friend President Bush to stop the execution of five illegal alien Death Row inmates. You’ll recall that in March, our Supreme Court sided with the state of Texas in upholding US sovereignty and rejecting the World Court/Bush view that individual US states should submit to international law and overturn the will of the people on the death penalty.

What part of “No” don’t they understand?

For more background see:

Amnesty International USA:Death Penalty

The death penalty is the ultimate, irreversible denial of human rights. By working towards the abolition of the death penalty worldwide, Amnesty International USA's Death Penalty Abolition Campaign looks to end the cycle of violence created by a system riddled with economic and racial bias and tainted by human error.

and :
Amnesty International USA:International Death Penalty

Encourage Worldwide Abolition
International death penalty trends are unmistakably towards abolition. Use of the death penalty worldwide has continued to shrink, and use of the death penalty has also been increasingly curtailed in international law. Since 1990, an average of three countries each year have abolished the death penalty, and today over two-thirds of the world's nations have ended capital punishment in law or practice.

and again on the official US website officials argue against such an International body which would have the power to investigate and have the power to arrest an American citizen guilty of such crimes. ie George bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Condi Rice , Bolton, Gonzales etc. Heaven forbid American officials or citizens be bound by the same rules as other Nations. Once agasin we are told America is special and the best country in the world and can do no wrong and if it does a simple apology should suffice- will the world continue to fall for this line of American Exceptionalism.

The United States has not been a real booster of the International Criminal Court & other such bobies most likely because that would mean that the actions of any American administration could be scrutinized by such a body and those in power in the US know that this might not bode well for them as in their Invasion and Occupation of Iraq or the toppling of various foreign governments and the backing of brutal anti-democratic regimes around the world or the use by American officials of torture and kidnapings aka Extraordinary Renditions which contravene international law.

And On US Opposition to the International Criminal Court see article from Global Policy Forum :"US Opposition to the International Criminal Court"

The United States government has consistently opposed an international court that could hold US military and political leaders to a uniform global standard of justice. The Clinton administration participated actively in negotiations towards the International Criminal Court treaty, seeking Security Council screening of cases. If adopted, this would have enabled the US to veto any dockets it opposed. When other countries refused to agree to such an unequal standard of justice, the US campaigned to weaken and undermine the court. The Bush administration, coming into office in 2001 as the Court neared implementation, adopted an extremely active opposition. Washington began to negotiate bilateral agreements with other countries, insuring immunity of US nationals from prosecution by the Court. As leverage, Washington threatened termination of economic aid, withdrawal of military assistance, and other painful measures. These exclusionary steps clearly endanger the fledgling Court and may seriously weaken its credibility and effectiveness.