Trump is sending anti-LGBT activists to UN Women’s Rights conference
Donald Trump is sending activists from anti-LGBT groups as part of America’s official delegation to a UN women’s rights conference.
The 61st annual United Nations Commission on the Status of Women is take place at the United Nations Headquarters in New York this month.
Ahead of the event, the United States Department of State confirmed its delegation to the event.
Shockingly, it includes activists from the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-FAM) and the Heritage Foundation – two fringe faith groups that oppose LGBT equality and women’s rights laws.
C-FAM is designated as an anti-LGBT hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and has attacked the “homosexual agenda”.
Its President Austin Ruse previously said that professors behind “the nonsense that they teach in women’s studies (…) should all be taken out and shot”.
Meanwhile the Heritage Foundation has been embroiled in several legal battles opposing LGBT equality, and has claimed that anti-discrimination laws grant LGBT people “special privileges”.
The official responsible for the delegation is Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who had been considered a relative moderate on LGBT issues among Trump’s cabinet.
Jessica Stern of OutRight Action International said: “In their Senate confirmation hearings, Secretary of State Tillerson and US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley repeatedly pledged to uphold the right to be free from discrimination as an American value. The appointment of these organizations to the official US delegation undermines their positions.
£I urge Secretary Tillerson and Ambassador Haley to ensure that the US delegation maintains non-discrimination at the CSW in the face of obvious pressure from these newly appointed members of the delegation.
“Fundamentalist notions about how women and girls should behave should never be the basis of advising or negotiating US foreign policy.
“It is also a bad sign that two organizations that have tried to delegitimize the United Nations and human rights internationally now sit on the official US delegation.
“Maybe the violent mentality that got C-FAM labeled a hate group successfully panders to their base, but the US government must ensure protection for the world’s most vulnerable people.”
Jessica Stern added: “What the US says about women from around the world at the CSW will be a sign of things to come for American women, so it is essential that the US uphold American values and prevent all forms of discrimination at the CSW.”
