US Joins Brutal Dictatorships Seeking to Sabotage Human Rights

Defeating Trump at the polls is critical for the US and the world

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has for over a year been pushing a project to change the international definition and practice of human rights. To prioritize the rights of religion and private property over the rights of women, LGBTQ people, and other marginalized minorities. Yesterday, in a speech to the UN General Assembly, Pompeo pushed hard for the now-official US proposal. For now, only authoritarian states with track records of abusing human rights have signed on with the US, but unless voters can push Trump out of office, human rights around the world stand to suffer a huge setback.

US human rights ideals, the struggle

When I was a small boy in a conservative Baptist church, I learned to view the US as a champion of human rights. I learned my country stood up against oppression anywhere people were not free to live as they chose. As I grew older, I realized that view was naive, that my country often failed to live up to its ideals and sometimes actively fought against human rights.

I had to sit in church and listen as ministers preached against the full human equality of Black people and other non-white people.

Ideals, unachieved but fought for

But I never stopped believing in the ideal of basic rights for all. As a young man, I helped take to the streets in New York City to fight against human rights abuses of LGBTQ people and people living with HIV and AIDS.

My experience has taught me that rights have to be fought for, and I’ve always believed we Americans are TRYING, even with great difficulty, to live up to noble ideals set forth in our Bill of Rights and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Ideals abandoned

I never thought I would live to see the day when the United States would explicitly argue for the restriction of human rights on the international stage. I never dreamed our elected government would join oppressive regimes like Saudi Arabia, Hungary, Egypt, Poland, and Serbia while traditional liberal democracies with expansive human rights records all but boycotted us.

But that’s exactly what happened yesterday when Secretary Pompeo showed up (via a recorded speech) at the United Nations.

One diplomat, speaking anonymously to the Washington Post, explained that most EU member states declined to attend the speech because they believe the US’s new human rights proposal amounts to elevating certain “cherry picked” rights over other, equally important rights.

Human rights advocates are so horrified by the work Pompeo and his “Commission on Unalienable Rights” is doing that that don’t even want to give it a semblance of attention. They say the commission’s report is biased in favor of conservative religious views, a foreordained conclusion given its religious makeup, and that it restricts rights and even nationalizes them.

Ominously, yesterday when the US released a list of 57 countries that have signed on to Pompeo’s proposal, it very closely resembled a list of 53 countries that support China’s crackdown on democracy in Hong Kong. The US has joined ranks, and quite officially, with nations that have little respect for human rights and often employ torture, secret detention, and long prison terms to suppress them.

Pompeo’s religious bias and agenda

Tuesday afternoon before his UN speech, Pompeo gave a radio interview to Tony Perkins of the anti-LGBTQ hate group Family Research Council, saying “Pushing religion out of the public square drives oppression, drives authoritarian regimes, and really gets at human dignity.”

Pompeo, who opposes same-sex marriage and calls homosexuality a “perversion,” is a fierce opponent of LGBTQ equality. Mother Jones magazine, noting how frequently he appears on Perkins’ extremist radio program, documents how Pompeo has “turbocharged” the State Department’s war on LGBTQ and gender equality.

Pompeo’s “war” is often cruel and petty, like refusing to issue visas to the same-sex partners of UN and NGO staffers or refusing to issue passports to the infant children of same-sex US-citizen couples. But it’s also systematic, far ranging, and destructive, like refusing to sign onto international statements recognizing the human rights of LGBTQ people and removing references to gender from international agreements.

Pompeo, telling Perkins that human rights spring from religious faith, did not explain how that could possibly square with women’s equality, which many devoutly religious nations like Saudi Arabia and Egypt oppose. That might have been an uncomfortable conversation, anyway, given Perkins is on the record claiming Islam is not protected under the US Constitution.

Neither Pompeo nor Perkins are shy about expressing their extremist-Christian bias. Pompeo shocked the State Department and much of the nation last October when he gave a speech (in his official capacity) explaining why he considers himself to be a “Christian leader,” and how his private faith dictates his public policy positions.

Anti-LGBTQ and anti-abortion crusaders like Tony Perkins have long used their religious beliefs to attack the fundamental human rights of people who don’t share that faith.

It’s another things entirely to see a government official like Pompeo doing it.

That’s one of the reasons why the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the rich traditions surrounding it are so crucial. Human rights leaders leverage that tradition to recognize that no religious faith justifies denying the fundamental rights of marginalized people around the world.

Human rights exist independently of religion and are not based on religion. Secretary of State Pompeo doesn’t recognize that and is working hard to bring his backward and restrictive view of human rights to the world. States with strong rights records oppose him. Authoritarian and repressive states are his allies.

If Pompeo gets his way, women’s equality, contraception, abortion, LGBTQ equality, and other cherished rights that don’t square with his extremist religious mindset will be off the table as fundamental rights.

The United States is wildly off track

Rob Berschinski of Human Rights First told Mother Jones, “You can tell a US priority initiative on human rights is wildly off-track when it attracts support from Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, but not Sweden, Norway, France, or the UK.”

I believe a majority of US people understand our nation is wildly off track. The Trump administration has ushered in a jaw-dropping era in which not only our president cozies up to strongmen and dictators, but our official foreign policy aligns us with dictators who would deny human rights rather than protect them.

Commentators have been observing that the United States is well along on a path toward authoritarianism, even calling us a “pre-fascist” state. The fact that our allies in the United Nations yesterday were all authoritarian nations, some brutal dictatorships, is one more sign that we’ve lost our moral way.

Defeating Trump at the polls is critical for the US and the world

When I was a child sitting in church learning about ideals, I didn’t yet know we didn’t live up to them. As an young adult, fighting to honor those ideals, I never dreamed we’d abandon them in principle.

I never dreamed the US would become a foe of human rights on purpose. But that’s happening right now. The only way we can stop it is by turning out in overwhelming numbers on November 4 (or voting by mail) to throw Trump out of office.

Have you voted yet? Do you plan to? Even if you don’t think Biden is a perfect candidate, please consider that four more years of Trump equals four more years of his people destroying the international conception of human rights.

James Finn is a former Air Force intelligence analyst, long-time LGBTQ activist, an alumnus of Queer Nation and Act Up NY, an essayist occasionally published in queer news outlets, and an “agented” novelist. Send questions, comments, and story ideas to [email protected].