During a CPAC panel on supposed U.S. spending “to promote abortion and homosexuality worldwide,” Austin Ruse of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute (C-Fam), attacked protections for people based on their sexual orientation and gender identity in United Nations studies on violence and execution. Ruse first lamented that an initially-removed reference to sexual orientation was restored to a resolution condemning summary, extrajudicial and arbitrary executions, and went on to bemoan a decision by the Human Rights Council to study “discriminatory laws and practices and acts of violence against individuals based on their sexual orientation and gender identity, in all regions of the world.” He argued that such a resolution is “just the nose of the camel under the tent” and lashed out at supporters of LGBT rights, maintaining that “their theory of international law is that it’s done by lying, coercion and trickery.”
In 2010 there was a debate about summary execution that entered sexual orientation and gender identity into the equation, that was defeated and then it was accepted, and then the Human Rights Council last summer called for a report on violence against homosexuals. This was hard fought, it was barely lost, and the reasons that countries oppose this idea, ‘what’s wrong with having a study on violence against homosexuals,’ it’s because they’re introducing language which we know is just the nose of the camel under the tent. When this vote took place calling simply for a study, it was heralded in the New York Times as a great victory for human rights of the LGBT community, it was nothing of the sort it was a vote to have a study. See, this is the drumbeat that they use, ‘oh it’s a victory for human rights’ and then it happens again ‘and it’s another victory for human rights’ and it happens again ‘and it’s another victory for human rights,’ and the water gets warmer and warmer and warmer until the frog is boiled. This is their theory of international law: their theory of international law is that it’s done by lying, coercion and trickery.
