Introduction:
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In 1948, the 56 members of the United Nations adopted
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Recognized as one
of the most influential and inspirational statements of human rights,
the UDHR proclaims that recognizing the �inherent dignity and . . .
the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family
is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.�
Human rights are the rights a person has simply because he or she
is a human being. Human rights are inalienable: you cannot
lose these rights any more than you can cease being human. Human rights
are indivisible: you cannot be denied a right because it is
�less important� than another right. Human rights are interdependent:
all human rights are part of a complementary framework. For example,
the right to participate in government is directly affected by the
right to free expression, to get an education, and even to obtain
the necessities of life.
Human rights are also defined as those basic standards people need
to live in dignity. To violate someone�s human rights is to treat
that person as less than a human being. To advocate for human rights
is to demand that the human dignity of all people be respected. In
claiming these rights, everyone also accepts the responsibility not
to infringe on the rights of others and to support those whose rights
are abused or denied.1
Since the adoption of the UDHR, the concept of human rights has
entered international law and popular consciousness in much of the
world. At the same time, many governments around the world continue
to violate the human rights of their citizens. Consider the following
news items from 1998, the year of the UDHR�s fiftieth anniversary:
� In Afghanistan, at least five men convicted of homosexuality were
placed next to walls and then buried as the walls were toppled on
top of them.2
� In Mexico, the Citizen�s Commission Against Homophobic Hate Crimes
documented 125 murders of homosexuals, many including extreme violence.
Many of the murders were dismissed by police who refused to investigate
them.
� In the United States, Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old student at
the University of Wyoming, was brutally beaten in an attack motivated
in part by his homosexuality. His skull was smashed, his face and
head mutilated, and his body tied to a wooden ranch fence in freezing
weather. He died several days after being found by bicyclists who,
at first, mistook his body for a scarecrow.
1 This definition is taken from Nancy Flowers
(ed.), Human Rights Here and Now: Celebrating the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights. Minneapolis: Human Rights Resource Center, 1998.
This curriculum guide contains more information on the history of
human rights and lessons introducing human rights to K-12 students.
2 The bullet points in this and the following
two sections are taken from �The International Gay and Lesbian Human
Rights Commission Celebrates the 50th Anniversary of the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights.� Press release, December 1998.
As these cases highlight, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender
(LGBT) persons are subject to human rights abuse in countries in every
region of the world. The violations they face include killing as well
as imprisonment, torture, and abuses aimed specifically at sexual
minorities, such as practices aimed at forcibly �changing� their sexual
orientation. These violations of UDHR Article 3, �the right to life,
liberty, and security of person,� are only the most extreme examples
of violations of the rights of sexual minorities.
Also during 1998:
� In Argentina, Buenos Aires police raided gay bars during October
detaining over 100 persons. (Article 20 of the UDHR states that everyone
has the �right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.�)
� In Sweden, authorities deported a gay asylum seeker from Iran.
Repatriated Iranian gays face possible imprisonment or death in Iran.
(Article 14 of the UDHR declares the �right to seek and to enjoy in
other countries asylum from persecution.�)
� In India, theaters showing Fire, are attacked because of
the movie�s lesbian story line. Many theaters subsequently refuse
to screen the film. (Article 27 of the UDHR holds that all have the
�right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community.�)
� In the United States, two adult men are arrested in Houston under
Texas� sodomy law for consensual homosexual conduct in private. Though
rarely enforced, about half of all U.S. states have similar laws.
(Article 7 of the UDHR states that �All are equal before the law and
are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the
law.� In addition, Article 12 maintains, �No one shall be subjected
to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence,
nor to attacks upon his honor and reputation.�)
These cases demonstrate how human rights violations of LGBT persons
extend beyond their rights to life and liberty and include the full
spectrum of rights accorded in the UDHR.
Not all the news fifty years after passage of the UDHR is so bleak,
however.
� In South Africa and Ecuador, newly adopted constitutions pledge
equality before the law (Article 7 of the UDHR) regardless of sexual
orientation. Also in South Africa, the highest constitutional court
struck down laws criminalizing homosexuality as a violation of the
right to privacy (Article 12 of the UDHR) and because they affected
the �dignity, personhood, and identity of lesbian and gay people.�
� In Canada, that nation�s Supreme Court ruled that when the Alberta
legislature omitted �sexual orientation� from the province�s anti-discrimination
laws, it was violating the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The court ruled that such protection should be read into the law.
(Article 8 of the UDHR describes the �right to an effective remedy
by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental
human rights granted by the constitution or the law.�)
� In Colombia, the Constitutional Court decreed that private religious
schools cannot ban gay students and that firing gay teachers is unconstitutional.
(Article 26 of the UDHR says everyone has the �right to education.�)
These last three snapshots from 1998 illustrate that the rights
of sexual minorities are increasingly being seen as human rights.
Many of those who drafted the UDHR probably would not have considered
the rights of sexual minorities in 1948, given the homophobia and
general lack of consciousness about LGBT issues at that time.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was drafted in reaction
to the inhumanity committed during World War II. Like Jews, gypsies,
and the disabled, gay men and lesbians were singled out by the Nazis
for slave labor and extermination. As many as 100,000 gay men were
sent to the concentration camps where they were killed or worked to
death. They were required to wear pink triangles, a symbol that has
since come to stand for the international gay rights movement. Several
thousand lesbians, considered �anti-social elements� and forced to
wear black triangles, met similar fates. Despite these atrocities,
the UDHR contains no specific guarantees of fundamental human rights
regardless of sexual orientation.
While subsequent human rights documents have addressed discrimination
of other specific groups based on age, race, or sex, no international
human rights document explicitly mentions sexual orientation or gender
identity. As the examples describing abuses against sexual minorities
at the beginning of this introduction suggest, such protection is
needed and deserved. For this reason, evolving conceptions of human
rights that come to include sexual orientation, such as those in South
Africa, Ecuador, Canada, and Colombia, are especially significant.
In theory, general human rights documents protecting the rights
of all should also protect the rights of sexual minorities. In fact,
many persons opposing specific protections of the rights of lesbian,
gay, bisexual, and transgender persons often argue that sexual minorities
are already covered by existing law and thus no further mention is
needed. In some cases, general human rights laws have been used specifically
to secure rights for lesbians and gays. For example, based on the
European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental
Freedoms, laws against homosexual acts between consenting adults were
struck down in Ireland and Cyprus.
While lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender persons are winning
victories based on general human rights law, just as often these laws
fail to provide sexual minorities with necessary protection from human
rights abuses for a number of reasons. Sexual minorities often fail
to report violence against them. They may fear their sexual orientation
will be made public, making them or their families targets for further
violence. They may fear that their complaints will not be taken seriously
or that such complaints will be used as reprisals against them. For
good reason, they may lack trust in the authorities who are supposed
to protect them. In many countries, police are some of the worst violators
of sexual minorities� human rights. For example, as this is being
written, Amnesty International reports that Entre Amigos, an organization
in El Salvador that provides sex education to gay, lesbian, bisexual,
and trans gender persons, as well as the general public, is the target
of intimidation and violence, including killings and death threats
from members of the National Civilian Police.3
3 Amnesty International Urgent Action, Extra
159/99, Fear for Safety/Death threats, El Salvador, 12 November 1999.
In many countries, sexual minorities are so marginalized, they lack
the most basic resources to defend themselves, publicize abuses, or
rally support. For example, such an environment made it easier for
the President of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe, to compare lesbians and
gays to pigs. In 1996 his government prevented a gay and lesbian organization
from participating in an international book fair in Harare, the capital.
He said, �I find it extremely outrageous and repugnant to my human
conscience that such repulsive organizations, like those of homosexuals,
who offend both against the laws of nature and the morals and religious
beliefs espoused by our society, should have any advocate in our midst
and even elsewhere in the world.�4
Governments also hide their persecution of sexual minorities using
the cover of other legal charges. Men and women who are imprisoned,
tortured, and even executed for no reason other than their sexual
orientation or gender identity are often falsely charged with other
crimes such as �vagrancy,� �hooliganism,� and �causing a public disturbance.�
In some countries, declaring oneself gay is seen as �causing a public
disturbance.� Once arrested, sexual minorities are sometimes subjected
to cruel and unusual forms of punishment, including bogus �medical
treatments� to �cure� them of their �disease.�
As a result of cultural and religious taboos, some governments are
reluctant even to admit the existence of gays and lesbians. Not surprisingly,
these same governments are even less willing to protect their human
rights. They claim that abuses against sexual minorities are carried
out by individuals and that the government cannot control such actions,
ignoring that most countries have laws that do protect individuals
from persecution based on religion or race by other individuals.
In some countries, protection for gays and lesbians may be labeled
a foreign, �western� concept being forced upon them. In other countries,
governments maintain the right to discriminate against lesbian, gay,
bisexual, and transgender persons based on religious authority and
criminal law. Such laws, however, are vulnerable to challenge under
international law. In 1994, the UN Human Rights Committee ruled that
laws criminalizing homosexual acts in the Australian state of Tasmania
violated Australia�s obligations under Articles 2 (non-discrimination)
and 17 (right to privacy) of the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights. In 1997, Tasmania repealed its anti-gay law.
One of the most powerful ways to promote the continued evolution
of LGBT rights as human rights and to interrupt the cycle of abuses
against sexual minorities is through human rights education. Such
education includes learning about human rights (for example, violations
of rights and international laws protecting rights) and learning how
to respect others and support and defend their human rights. Obviously,
schools can play a key role in creating a culture that supports the
human rights of all, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender
persons. Ironically, schools are sometimes among the least safe environments
for LGBT youth.
Human Rights Watch, the largest U.S.-based human rights organization,
is currently investi gating whether the treatment of LGBT youth in
schools constitutes a violation of fundamental
4 Quoted in Amnesty International, Breaking
the Silence: Human Rights Violations Based on Sexual Orientation.
London, 1997: 38.
human rights. Their investigation was initiated after a conversation
with represen tatives from the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education
Network (GLSEN) and the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund. Lambda
and GLSEN argued that youth under the age of 16 are legally required
to attend school and that parents turn over their responsibility for
the safety and well-being of their children to teachers and administrators.
Schools, therefore, become custodial settings, responsible for the
well-being of those placed in their charge. While human rights organizations
have paid careful attention to the treatment of those placed in custodial
institutions such as prisons and psychiatric hospitals, no human rights
organization has looked at schools in the same way using a human rights
perspective.
Such attention is needed in schools. GLSEN has collected compelling
evidence that homophobia in schools is destructive to the education
of all students, not only LGBT students who are direct targets. Straight
students have been abused after being mistaken for gay, and all straight
students are shortchanged a lesson in respect when school culture
routinely marginalizes some students because of their sexual orientation
or gender identity. In addition to the right to an education (Article
26 of the UDHR), all students in school have the right to be free
from violence (Article 3), the right to freedom of expression (Article
19), and the right to freedom of assembly (Article 20). Statistics
compiled by GLSEN suggest that violence against LGBT youth is pervasive.
Recent school board decisions in Salt Lake City, Utah and Orange County,
California to ban gay-straight alliances from meeting at public schools
demonstrate threats to the rights to assembly and free expression.
In addition to the unsafe environment for LBGT youth, school curriculum
routinely ignores sexual minorities. Writers� sexual orientation is
rarely mentioned, even when such information is crucial to understanding
their work. LGBT persons are left out of almost every history textbook.
Few teachers ask students to consider sexual minorities in the context
of lessons about civil or human rights.
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights: A Human Rights
Perspective is intended to help teachers introduce thoughtful
examination and responsible action among high school students about
the rights of sexual minorities. Unlike other curricula, however,
this discussion is not set in the context of civil or political rights
but in the broader context of human rights at the international level
as well as at the most local level�school. By learning to examine
thoughtfully the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender
persons and by gaining practice in the skills needed to prevent abuses
and secure human rights, we can face the fear and shatter the silence
that allows sexual minorities to be killed, tortured, and arbitrarily
detained in countries throughout the world. We can also create schools
where the human rights of all are respected.
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