U.S. Angry that Traditional Countries Blocked Consensus on LGBT Issues

By | December 21, 2023

NEW YORK, December 22 (C-Fam) In the open debate at the UN General Assembly this week, an obviously frustrated U.S. delegate to the General Assembly repeatedly scolded delegates from traditional countries for objecting to the U.S. and EU homosexual/transgender agenda.

This was the final debate before several dozen nonbinding resolutions were accepted by the General Assembly.

Traditional countries insisted that there are no international human rights obligations based on the concepts of “sexual orientation and gender identity.” This upset the U.S. delegate who has been working for years to make homosexual/trans issues human rights.

Visibly irritated, she chided Gulf countries, Egypt, Nigeria, and Pakistan, and others who repeated their objections to the terms in a U.S. resolution on elections.

“Over eighty percent of the membership supports this resolution,” she decried, pointing to the fact that 155 countries voted in favor of the resolution, nine more than had supported the resolution in the third committee.

She vowed that the U.S. would still consider the terms “consensual” all the same, over the objections of any country who disagreed and ever thought this was clearly false.

“Over eighty percent speaks for itself, and we will still consider it consensus,” she said adamantly. The U.S. delegate said it was not “particularly fruitful” for traditional countries to repeat their objections to the terms.

The same countries had opposed the language with an amendment to delete the terms when the resolution was first debated in the General Assembly’s third committee, which deals with social issues, a month ago. Sixty-three countries voted to delete the controversial terms. Now, they were repeating their objections in the wider forum of the General Assembly plenary and the U.S. delegate was annoyed.

The American spoke in a brash and irritated tone because the mere fact that such a powerful group of countries from across Africa and Asia spoke out against homosexual/trans issues as human rights legally means these controversial ideas cannot be considered human rights.

A delegate from Egypt, highlighted how 63 countries had voted to remove the terms in the third committee and called the U.S. insistence on homosexual/trans issues an “undemocratic imposition.”

A delegate from Pakistan objected to the U.S. characterization of the resolution as consensual. “Delegations that voted in favor of this resolution did so because we fully support democracy but not those concepts that are not consensually agreed and are not part of the domestic laws of the many countries that supported the amendments,” she said. Pakistan was among the delegations that voted in favor of the resolution even though they opposed the controversial terms.

A Nigerian delegate said the U.S. position was “exhausting.” She said the terms “sexual orientation and gender identity” were not mentioned in any international treaty.

A delegate from Djibouti said they had “no accepted legal or scientific meaning.”

Delegates from Belarus, Malaysia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, and Yemen also said the terms were not in line with their religious and cultural values and that the terms cannot be considered “internationally agreed” or “consensual.” This is a technical but important label.

When UN resolutions are agreed by consensus, that is, without any objections, they are considered to be strong evidence of an emerging new norm under customary international law. Customary international law is binding on all states. It emerges from interactions between states and international organizations.

The idea is that if countries adopt a UN resolution repeatedly and it is implemented consistently over time it can become a binding international norm. The mere objection to such a norm can prevent it from coming into existence and binding all member states. The U.S. delegate’s visible frustration betrayed her sense of defeat.

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