Trump lackey Mike Pompeo to put same-sex marriage and LGBT+ rights in the firing line with sinister ‘human rights report’
Mike Pompeo. (Getty/ Joe Raedle)
US secretary of state Mike Pompeo is set to release a “human rights report” on Thursday, July 16, which critics fear will attack abortion, LGBT+ rights and same-sex marriage.
The Commission on Unalienable Rights, supposedly based on “natural law”, was formed by the Trump administration in July, 2019, to undercut the US government’s existing human rights laws, but one year on it is yet to release its first report.
Pompeo claimed that the commission was necessary because “international institutions designed and built to protect human rights have drifted from their original mission”, and said it would answer questions like: “How do we know or how do we determine whether that claim that this or that is a human right, is it true, and therefore, ought it to be honoured?”
The group is dominated by officials with anti-LGBT+ views, with seven of the ten members having expressed these views publicly, and when the commission was announced, anti-LGBT+ activist Brian Brown said it was an “extraordinary opening” to reverse LGBT+ equality.
In March, four human rights groups sued the US department of state and Pompeo, alleging that the Commission on Unalienable Rights violates federal law because it has no clear purpose, all of its members have the same religious, conservative viewpoint and its basis of “natural law” puts religion above all other human rights.
According to Politico, on July 16 Mike Pompeo will present the commission’s report at an event at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.
Democratic representatives Jamie Raskin and Joaquin Castro previously spoke out about their fears that the commission and its report could be used to roll back LGBT+ and abortion rights.
They said: “We have feared that its work would result in the deprivation of LGBT+ and reproductive rights, undermine long-standing, bipartisan commitment to human rights principles in US foreign policy, and inaccurately interpret US obligations under the international human rights framework.”
However, the commission has been secretive about the content of its meetings so far, and activists note that until its release on Thursday, its impact will remain a mystery.
Mark Bromley, chairman of the LGBT+ human rights coalition Council for Global Equality, told the New York Times that the commission “is a group of individuals who want to redefine how this country balances human rights interests and to tip the scales in favour of religious freedom”, and added that Pompeo “has a very clear idea, if you look at his writings and speakings, of where he wants it to end up”.
