International Trans Lobby gives up on SCOTUS cases

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WASHINGTON, D.C., July 4 (C-Fam) In a surprising departure from recent years, LGBT groups and their supporters stayed quiet about international human rights law during the just-concluded Supreme Court term.

In two blockbuster cases this term, Mahmoud v. Taylor and United States v. Skrmetti, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against transgender medical interventions for minors and in favor of parental rights to opt their children out of school curricula that promote homosexual/transgender propaganda. Neither case features a single legal claim based on international human rights law. It was not cited in the parties’ arguments, nor in legal briefs from outside groups to the Supreme Court, nor in their reactions to the court’s rulings.

The silence undermines claims by liberal human rights groups, UN human rights bodies and UN agencies that children have a right to “gender affirming care” and comprehensive sexuality education, including information about homosexual/transgender issues. UN agencies and UN human rights bodies routinely claim such rights.

UN human rights bodies and UN agencies promote children’s access to comprehensive sexuality education and to non-discriminatory services, including “access to gender-affirming treatment for those who seek.” The UN population agency, UNFPA, claims that children have a right to access such treatments as one element of a constellation of “comprehensive sexual and reproductive health care services.” The UN Agency for children, UNICEF, told the Friday Fax last year that it does not have a policy with regard to parental consent for chemical castration and sexual mutilation in cases where minors seek such services.

One can only speculate as to the reason for the silence from UN human rights experts, including the Independent Expert on Violence and Discrimination Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, who has not been shy about interfering in internal affairs on other occasions. If in good faith they believed rights based on “gender identity” or “sexual orientation” exist, they nevertheless chose not to claim so before the U.S. Supreme Court, arguably the most powerful court in the world.

The absence of such arguments suggests that global homosexual/transgender lobby groups and their backers in government and academia have opted for a strategic withdrawal from the U.S. Supreme Court as a venue to advance their agenda. The decision may have been motivated by a desire to avoid a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that denied the existence of binding international human rights law obligations based on “gender” or “sexual orientation.” Supreme Court cases become binding precedent and are cited around the world as a legal authority. A blockbuster case against international gay/trans rights would have a ripple effect across foreign legal systems.

This silence is a break from the recent past. UN bodies and international law scholars made aggressive arguments in favor of abortion rights and homosexual marriage based on international human rights standards in other Supreme Court cases.

In the Dobbs case, when the Supreme Court overturned a constitutional right to abortion, international law arguments were raised in three separate legal briefs submitted by international legal scholars, UN human rights experts, and international activist groups like Amnesty International. They argued that a right to abortion had emerged under customary international law because of the work of the UN system to promote abortion. After the ruling, the UN experts viciously attacked the U.S. Supreme Court.

In the Obergefell case, when the U.S. Supreme Court imposed homosexual marriage on the entire nation, several briefs cited foreign laws and alluded to vague human rights standards.

In both cases, the Court made no findings about international law or foreign precedents.

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