Wednesday, December 10, 2008

UN Calls for an End to Criminalization of Homosexuality

From Joe. My. God.

The US government is one of the only Western democratic nations that has declined to support a United Nations Declaration calling for the global decriminalisation of homosexuality. 

The Declaration will be put before the UN General Assembly this Wednesday, 10 December, which is Human Rights Day and the sixtieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. 

"It will be the first time in its history that the UN General Assembly has ever considered the issue of lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) human rights," noted British gay human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell of the London-based LGBT rights group OutRage! 

Although not be binding on the member states, the declaration will have immense symbolic value, given the six decades in which homophobic persecution has been ignored by the UN. 

For a summary of the countries supporting the Declaration, see below. 

"Even today, not a single international human rights convention explicitly acknowledges the human rights of LGBT people. The right to physically love the person of one’s choice is nowhere enshrined in any global humanitarian law. No convention recognises sexual rights as human rights. None offer explicit protection against discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity," Tatchell added. 

Eighty-six countries (nearly half the nations on Earth) still have a total ban on male homosexuality and a smaller number also ban sex between women. The penalties in these countries range from a few years jail to life imprisonment. In at least seven countries or regions of countries (all under Islamist jurisdiction), the sentence is death: Saudi Arabia, Iran, Yemen, Sudan, Mauritania and parts of Nigeria and Pakistan:
Apparently, it's all about the Pope with United States. Really? The Pope?

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