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[Mogul]

The US government has a very ambivalent attitude towards gays: on one hand it demands to stop persecution of gays on the international stage, on the other hand it strives to keep domestic gays down at the level of the second-class citizens. The apparent contradiction is none, the US government simply does not regard certain political and civil rights as human rights at all, for example it does not think that the right for equal professional chances or the right to marry is a human right, at least as far as gays are concerned. This position is not unique in the world, indeed many religious organizations (among them Catholic Church) and various governments all over the world jointly declare that gay rights are NOT human rights at all.

Following this logic, one can blame human rights violations while at the same time commiting outrageous crimes against gays and lesbians. It's so simple: declare a group of people to be sub-humans and you can do anything to them without blush in the face. Call them "dogs", "pigs" or even "unlawfull combattants" and you can kill and torture and still feel comfortable and probably even fancy yourselfe defending freedom and democracy. Isn't this the way it goes?

We will see whether there will be actually a resolution on this issue. What countries are constituting the majority in the Human Rights Councille currently? I hardly can believe that delegates from Sudan, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, China etc will support a resolution to protect gay rights in the USA. But of course, the mere placing in the pillory can make the US officials think a little bit about the issue.

[Feral]

A new report says the United States isn't doing enough to protect its gay citizens from discrimination and abuse and asks the United Nations to intercede.

The report, released July 17 by the human rights organization Global Rights, came the same day that U.S. officials were to be questioned by the U.N. Human Rights Committee in Geneva.

The report, titled "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender & Intersex Human Rights in the United States" could spur U.N. officials to grill the U.S. delegation about gay rights and protections.

The committee questioning, scheduled to occur July 17 and 18, is the first inquiry of its kind regarding human rights in the U.S. since 1995, according to Mark Bromley, a Global Rights spokesperson. Questions were expected to focus on war-related issues, like the handling of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, but gay rights advocates hoped U.N. officials would give some attention to their issues.

"What we're hoping is this [report] will convince [the U.N. Human Rights Committee] to ask probing questions of the official U.S. delegation about human rights as it applies to LGBTI Americans," said Bromley.

"In particular," he said, "we're trying to push the committee to ask the U.S. government how it plans to deal with gaps in the legal framework for LGBTI Americans."

Source

A PDF file of the report in question can be had here