Members of the Organization of American States (OAS) begin work this week on a treaty that would make sexual orientation "an inalienable right" worthy of human-rights protection.
"The document before the OAS this week mentions sexual orientation 15 times," according to Thomas Jacobson, Focus on the Family Action's representative to the United Nations. "In addition, it contains terms like 'hate crimes' and veiled pro-abortion language."
He said the nation behind the proposed language -- Brazil -- first tried to get the U.N. to go along in 2003.
"They failed in that attempt," Jacobson said. "They pushed again in 2004, and again failed, and, by 2005, they came to the Organization of American States."
The OAS is a 34-nation organization that includes the U.S., Canada and Mexico, as well as nations in Central and South America and the Caribbean.
"When Brazil's ambassadors proposed this, they said they wanted to protect human rights that were not protected in other documents -- they wanted to protect new rights -- and they specifically mentioned sexual orientation," Jacobson said. "It's a codeword for protecting homosexual rights, but it's not limited to homosexual rights. Just in the last three years, the U.N. has come to regard sexual orientation as meaning gays and lesbians -- but also bisexual and transgender people. They also came up with the term 'gender identity.' "
Sexual orientation and gender identity have no limits on how they can be interpreted, he added.
"What they are saying with this proposed treaty is that a person may practice any form of sexual behavior that is consensual with any other person -- with no reference to marriage, no reference to responsibility to any children which come forth from that union, and no limitation on the types of behavior."
Yuri Mantilla, director of international government affairs at Focus on the Family, said Brazil -- which is backed in its efforts by Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez -- is trying to advance a secularist, relativist worldview.
"At the end of the day," Mantilla told CitizenLink, "we have a clash of worldviews, a clash of ideas and a clash of ideologies here."
On the one hand, he said, you have moral-relativist and secularist nations whose conception of human rights includes sexual orientation and abortion.
"On other hand, there is a very clear, sound natural-law perspective of human rights," Mantilla said. "That's why the right to life is a fundamental human right -- marriage between one man and one woman is a fundamental human right."
Both Mantilla and Jacobson take comfort in the fact that haggling over the proposal is just beginning -- and the offensive language may be removed -- if the member nations question it.
"We expect that this draft will not prevail," Mantilla said. "We expect that Latin American nations and the United States will understand that this is an extremist view of reality and that this type of language should not be in an international treaty -- and that it will not be approved, as it stands now."
