Professional Documents
Culture Documents
2014
RUSH TRANSCRIPT: Austin Dacey
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[REV. DR. C. WELTON GADDY, HOST]: Welcome back to State of
Belief Radio, everyone. Im Welton Gaddy.
There it was, late last month, in Religion Dispatches Magazine: the
latest challenge in the frustrating, life-and-death game of whack-a-
mole that LGBT advocates keep having to play against the radical
anti-gay right.
As if attacks on the LGBT advances in the US werent enough
loaded with the poisonous language of Satanism, Nazism, Un-
Americanism As if the wholesale export of homophobia to Russia,
Africa and beyond, cloaked in the language of religious morality,
werent enough Now theyre going after the United Nations.
The author of the Religion Dispatches article exposing this gambit is
philosopher and activist Austin Dacey. Hes a former representative to
the United Nations for the International Humanist and Ethical Union,
and I am so pleased to have him join us now on State of Belief Radio.
Dr. Dacey, welcome.
[DR. AUSTIN DACEY, GUEST]: Its my pleasure.
[WG]: What happened last month at the UN that you found so
disturbing?
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[AD]: Whats disturbing is that there is a new attempt to cunningly
appropriate the language of human rights - human rights discourse
about economic development, about childrens health and rights its
enlisted in the service, as you say, of this worldwide campaign
against LGBTQ rights. And this was dramatized in a bit of political
theater with a new declaration of the rights of families, which was
read out in a side event at the United Nations Human Rights Council
in Geneva, Switzerland. And this Declaration on the Rights of
Children and Their Families lays out an unprecedented right, under
international human rights law, anyway, of each child to have a
heterosexual, married couple as its parents.
[WG]: So Dr. Dacey, summarize please the Declaration on the Rights
of Children and their Families thats what you were starting to do.
Tell us about it, and what is so terribly troubling about it?
[AD]: Well, its an attempt to use, as I say, the language of human
rights in order to defend what are really unprecedented claims under
human rights law. Children, in fact, do have the full human rights, and
their rights are defended under the 1989 Convention on the Rights of
the Child. And so the rights of children are already protected
although much more could be done in enforcing those international
covenants. Your listeners may know that the United States is alone in
the world well, with the good company of South Sudan and Somalia
in having not ratifed the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Notwithstanding that, the rights of children are already frmly
ensconced in human rights law. What this conservative organization
is attempting to do is to use legitimate concern for childrens rights,
and turn it into a specious argument for the heterosexual family as the
only morally and internationally legally permissible unit.
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[WG]: Its a very sneaky, unethical strategy that theyre using, and my
next question to you is: will members of the UN get it? Will they see
that this campaign is not what they are billing it to be?
[AD]: Well, I think Russia certainly got it. They were a sponsor of the
room at least they reserved the room for this American conservative
organization which was sponsoring this group, Family Watch
International. But I should say for those of you who dont understand
the complexities of the UN system, the declaration that was presented
in the last month, of course, has no legally-binding status. What is
more important is the Human Rights Council itself, which is a
democratic body in which UN member states can deliberate and pass
resolutions. These are legally non-binding, but they carry great moral
force and the imprimatur of the United Nations. And this recent
attempt is really part of a much larger context in which the struggle
over LGBTQ rights at the United Nations has become the new
lightning rod between countries such as the US and the European
Union, in particular, and many countries within the so-called
Organization of the Islamic Conference, led by Saudi Arabia and
Pakistan; but joined, interestingly, by China and Russia in this case.
And so the real action, I would say, and even the more disturbing
problem is that gay and lesbian rights as parents and as persons
have not yet found a frm home in the international legal system.
[WG]: Austin, whos behind this?
[AD]: Behind this movement is a group that calls itself the UN Family
Rights Caucus. And behind that is a US-based Arizona-based
organization called Family Watch International, which is run by an
activist named Sharon Slater, who is well-known among many
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progressives for her globetrotting activism against LGBTQ equality
and public health policies that include condom use as well.
Family Watch International has been deeply involved in promoting, as
I say in the article, abstinence and fdelity-only initiatives in Uganda,
and is on record as praising Nigeria as a strong role model for other
regional governments on how to defend family values in the face of
international pressure towards equality.
[WG]: Dr. Dacey, is it too simplistic to ask if you can draw a direct line
from the radical right culture war in the US and overseas to this
United Nations efort?
[AD]: Its not I cant say that Ive done all that research, but others
have. And what theyve found is that the language of family values
was actually deliberately introduced by US activists into these
international fora. There were workshops on how to use the defense
of the family and defense of childrens rights to appropriate legitimate
human rights concerns. And so that line is there.
[WG]: I want our listeners to understand the seriousness of the issue
were talking about. Whats the worst-case scenario here, and how
widespread could the impact from endorsements of this new
statement be?
[AD]: Well, I want to emphasize the Declaration on the Rights of
Children and Their Families is really a small piece of theater by one
NGO at the Human Rights Council. The legal struggle the struggle
over the meaning, the defnition, the enforcement of human rights
norms is perhaps more important, and that is that there is no
protection of LGBTQ equality under the existing human rights treaties.
Sexual discrimination discrimination on the basis of sex is
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prohibited by these treaties, but not gender identity or sexual identity.
Sexual minorities are not protected as such. And the worst-case
scenario is that this continues, and that these hostile countries, using
the democratic mechanisms at the UN, can continue to block the
push for equality under international law.
[WG]: Whos working to challenge this?
[AD]: Well, a number of US gay rights groups are at least watching
and monitoring this closely. The United States - which has been back
and active at the Human Rights Council since the start of the Obama
administration which is now under the leadership of Ambassador
Samantha Power the US has been, actually, a leader, and has been
working closely with allies at the Council. Recently there was a
debate, in this last 26
th
session of the Council in which a resolution
calling for the protection of the family was passed; and the US was
joined by Austria, Chile, the Czech Republic, Estonia, France,
Germany, Ireland, Japan, Korea and the UK in opposing this
resolution, and attempting to insert language which was eventually
defeated by a procedural tactic afrming that there are many forms,
or various forms, as it said, of the family. So there is a coalition of
liberal democratic states that are fghting against this, but they really
need help from the NGO community.
[WG]: How can our listeners help? And its got to be a very brief
answer, unfortunately.
[AD]: I would encourage your listeners to check in with human rights
groups like Human Rights Watch, Human Rights Campaign and
Amnesty International to see what they are doing. And my own
closest connection is with the Center for Inquiry, a Secular Humanist
think tank, which is at the UN as well.
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[WG]: Dr. Austin Dacey is a former representative to the United
Nations for the International Humanist and Ethical Union. An activist
and philosopher, Dr. Dacey is the author of the book, The Future of
Blasphemy: Speaking of the Sacred in an Age of Human Rights .
His warning about the Declaration on the Rights of Children and
Their Families appears in Religion Dispatches under the headline, At
the UN, Conservative Christian Agenda Cloaked in Human Rights
Language.
Dr. Dacey, this is a terribly important expose, and I hope that people
will pay attention before its too late. Youre doing your part. Thanks
for coming and talking to us about it. We welcome you to State of
Belief Radio, and we will welcome you back any time.
[AD]: Thank you so much, Rev. Gaddy.
Austin Dacey
Dr. Austin Dacey is a philosopher, author, and human rights activist
whose work on issues of freedom of conscience and expression has
been profled by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, BBC World
Service, NPR, and Voice of America. His writings have appeared in
numerous publications including USA Today, Dissent, and the New
York Times, which ran his 2006 op-ed, "Believing in Doubt." He
currently serves as an adviser to Freemuse: The World Forum on
Music and Censorship and in 2010 he created The Impossible Music
Sessions, a forum in New York City for banned music from around the
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world, and The Ethical Ear, a blog dedicated to the moral analysis of
the soundscape.