62 Sex-testing in sport? UN Committee says Gay/Transgender "Human Rights" override national laws

Sex-testing in sport? UN Committee says Gay/Transgender "Human Rights" override national laws

"The heretical bodies of intersex people challenge ... gender as a strict male/female phenomenon" - item 3, from the Trotskyist newspaper Socialist Worker

That newspaper objects to tests to determine whether an athlete who won a women's race, is "entirely female". It calls such tests "idiotic".

What would be the ramifications of abandoning such tests? Since the Gay/Lesbian/Transgender lobby denies the reality of Male-Female polarity and complementarity, the logical outcome must be official Androgyny - making all sports Unisex. And toilets too.

So: either there's just ONE sex - in which case sports events should be "unisex", ie for men & women - or else, if the are SIX sexes (genders), sports events should be for male, female, gay, lesbian, transsexual, & intersex.

The same would apply to public toilets - either one kind for all (Unisex), or six kinds.

New Internationalist magazine, each month, assesses Rights for its country of the month. In recent years it has included Gay & Transgender Rights.

New Internationalist is Trotskyist in its stance, although not sectarian (ie backing particular parties).

Anthropologist David Maybury-Lewis wrote in his book Millenium: Tribal Wisdom and the Modern World (Viking Penguin, New York, 1992):

"The ancient Egyptians believed that a totality must consist of the  union of opposites. A similar premise, that the interaction between yin (the  female principle) and yang (the male principle) underlies the workings of the  universe, is at the heart of much Chinese thinking. The idea has been  central to Taoist philosophy from the fourth century B.C. to the present day {p.  126} and is still embraced by many Chinese who are not Taoists. Nor is the idea  confined to the Egyptians and the Chinese. Peoples all over the world, in  Eurasia, Africa and the Americas, have come to the conclusion that the  cosmos is a combining of opposites and that one of the most important  aspects of this dualism is the opposition between male and female." (p. 125).

The Trotskyist (anti-Stalinist Communist) movement thinks nothing of overturning the basis of all previous societies - of Civilization itself.

(1) Could reigning Miss France be a monsieur? (2001)
(2) Transsexual disqualified from Miss Universe (2004)
(3) Testing the sex of track-and-field athlete is "ioiotic" - The (Trotskyist) Socialist Worker
(4) Protesting anti-LGBT bigotry in Rhode Island - Socialist Worker
(5) Protesters call for "marriage equality" for Gays & Lesbians - Socialist Worker
(6) Australian Christians fight Gay Surrogacy laws
(7) Repression of LBGT folks in Cuba and China is "Stalinist" {ie from a Trot perspective}
(8) Amsterdam's mayor, Job Cohen, was first public official to wed same-sex couples
(9) Gay lobby welcomes Frattini endorsement of Same-Sex Marriage for whole EU (2004)
(10) EU States warned to accept Same-Sex Marriage (2006)
(11) EU condemns "homophobia", demands Poland allow promotion of homosexuality in schools
(12) EU: 'Accept same-sex marriage or face expulsion'
(13) Michael Kirby supports elite (Executive + Judiciary) making Treaties without popular assent
(14) UN Committee says Gay/Lesbian/Transgender "Human Rights" override national laws
(15) Yogyakarta Principles specify International Human Rights Law on Gender Identity
(16) Cuban human rights examined by UN council
(17) U.N. Committee demands that Japan set up a Human Rights watchdog
(18) Obama backs bill to enforce LGBT & Transgender rights at work
(19) Obama admin calls statute that bars benefits for same-sex marriages "discriminatory"

(1) Could reigning Miss France be a monsieur? (2001)

By Philip Delves Broughton in New York and Harry de Quetteville in Paris

Copy from Electronic Telegraph

Wednesday 25 April 2001
Issue 2161

http://www.pfc.org.uk/node/690

THIS year's Miss Universe contest has been thrown into chaos by allegations that Miss France is a man.

Elodie Gossuin, previously assumed to be a 19-year-old woman from Picardy, arrived for the contest in Puerto Rico on Monday night to a barrage of impertinent questions.

The organisers demanded that she prove that she was neither a transvestite nor a transsexual, as a French internet site has claimed. Only natural-born females are allowed to compete. ...

(2) Transsexual disqualified from Miss Universe (2004)

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-02/27/content_310033.htm

Updated: 2004-02-27 12:32

Chen Lili, a 24-year old transsexual from Sichuan Province, was shut out of the Miss Universe contest by organizers, saying she is an artificial woman.

In a fax to the Sichuan organizing committee, the Miss Universe headquarters says Chen is disqualified because she is a transsexual. It says there never has been any such case in the 53-year history of the contest.

Lili was granted permission early this week to participate in the international event by Miss Universe-China contest officials in New York.

"A sex-change woman registering for the Miss Universe contest is something that has never happened before," Miss Universe selection committee chairman Zhang Ruiling told reporters. ...

(3) Testing the sex of track-and-field athlete is "ioiotic" - The (Trotskyist) Socialist Worker

The idiocy of sex testing

Dave Zirin

August 24, 2009

http://socialistworker.org/2009/08/24/idiocy-of-sex-testing

{this webpage carries an ad for Leon Trotsky's book History of the Russian Revolution. Ironically, the front cover features a picture of a man, in trousers, and a woman, in a skirt}}

Track-and-field star Caster Semenya is being subjected to vicious questions about her sex and a series of humiliating "gender tests." But, writes Dave Zirin, sports columnist for The Nation and author of A People's History of Sports in the United States, and Sherry Wolf, author of Sexuality and Socialism: History, Politics and Theory of LGBT Liberation, what officials won't discuss is the fact that millions of people around the globe don't conform to narrow categories of "male" and "female."

WORLD-CLASS South African athlete Caster Semenya, age 18, won the 800 meters in the International Association of Athletics Federations World Championships on August 19. But her victory was all the more remarkable in that she was forced to run amid a controversy that reveals the twisted way international track and field views gender.

Dave Zirin is the author of A People's History of Sports in the United States, as well as two collections of his sports writings, Welcome to the Terrordome: The Pain, Politics and Promise of Sports and What's My Name, Fool? Sports and Resistance in the United States. He is a columnist for TheNation.com; his writings are also featured at his Edge of Sports Web site.

The sports world has been buzzing for some time over the rumor that Semenya may be a man, or more specifically, not "entirely female." According to the newspaper The Age, her "physique and powerful style have sparked speculation in recent months that she may not be entirely female." From all accounts an arduous process of "gender testing" on Semenya has already begun. The idea that an 18-year-old who has just experienced the greatest athletic victory of her life is being subjecting to this very public humiliation is shameful to say the least.

Her own coach Michael Seme contributed to the disgrace when he said:

    We understand that people will ask questions because she looks like a man. It's a natural reaction and it's only human to be curious. People probably have the right to ask such questions if they are in doubt. But I can give you the telephone numbers of her roommates in Berlin. They have already seen her naked in the showers and she has nothing to hide.

The people with something to hide are the powers that be in track and field, as well as in international sport. As long as there have been women's sports, the characterization of the best female athletes as "looking like men" or "mannish" has consistently been used to degrade them. When Martina Navratilova dominated women's tennis and proudly exposed her chiseled biceps years before Hollywood gave its imprimatur to gals with "guns," players complained that she "must have a chromosome loose somewhere."

This minefield of sexism and homophobia has long pushed female athletes into magazines like Maxim to prove their "hotness"--and implicitly their heterosexuality. Track and field in particular has always had this preoccupation with gender, particularly when it crosses paths with racism. Fifty years ago, Olympic official Norman Cox proposed that in the case of Black women, "the International Olympic Committee should create a special category of competition for them--the unfairly advantaged 'hermaphrodites.'"

For years, women athletes had to parade naked in front of Olympic officials. This has now given way to more "sophisticated" "gender testing" to determine if athletes like Semenya have what officials still perceive as the ultimate advantage--being a man. Let's leave aside that being male is not the be-all, end-all of athletic success. A country's wealth, coaching facilities, nutrition and opportunity determine the creation of a world-class athlete far more than a Y chromosome or a penis ever could.

WHAT THESE officials still don't understand, or will not confront, is that gender--that is, how we comport and conceive of ourselves--is a remarkably fluid social construction. Even our physical sex is far more ambiguous and fluid than is often imagined or taught. Medical science has long acknowledged the existence of millions of people whose bodies combine anatomical features that are conventionally associated with either men or women and/or have chromosomal variations from the XX or XY of women or men.

Many of these "intersex" individuals, estimated at one birth in every 1,666 in the United States alone, are legally operated on by surgeons who force traditional norms of genitalia on newborn infants. In what some doctors consider a psychosocial emergency, thousands of healthy babies are effectively subject to clitorectomies if a clitoris is "too large" or castrations if a penis is "too small" (evidently penises are never considered "too big").

The physical reality of intersex people calls into question the fixed notions we are taught to accept about men and women in general, and men and women athletes in sex-segregated sports like track and field in particular. The heretical bodies of intersex people challenge the traditional understanding of gender as a strict male/female phenomenon.

While we are never encouraged to conceive of bodies this way, male and female bodies are more similar than they are distinguishable from each other. When training and nutrition are equal, it is increasingly difficult to tell the difference between some of the best-trained male and female Olympic swimmers wearing state-of-the-art one-piece speed suits.

Title IX, the 1972 law imposing equal funding for girls' and boys' sports in schools, has radically altered not only women's fitness and emotional well-being, but their bodies as well. Obviously, there are some physical differences between men and women, but it is largely our culture and not biology that gives them their meaning.

In 1986, Spanish hurdler Maria José Martínez-Patiño was stripped of her first-place winnings when discovered to have an XY chromosome, instead of the female's XX, which shattered her athletic career and upended her personal life. "I lost friends, my fiancé, hope and energy," said Martínez-Patiño in a 2005 editorial in the journal The Lancet.

Whatever track and field tells us Caster Semenya's gender is--and as of this writing there is zero evidence she is intersex--it's time we all break free from the notion that you are either "one or the other." It's antiquated, stigmatizing and says far more about those doing the testing than about the athletes tested. The only thing suspicious is the gender and sex bias in professional sports.

We should continue to debate the pros and cons of gender segregation in sport. But right here, right now, we must end sex testing and acknowledge the fluidity of gender and sex in sports and beyond.

(4) Protesting anti-LGBT bigotry in Rhode Island - Socialist Worker

http://socialistworker.org/2009/08/20/protesting-anti-lgbt-bigotry

Protesting anti-LGBT bigotry in R.I.

By Josh Kilby | August 20, 2009

{this webpage carries an ad for Leon Trotsky's book History of the Russian Revolution. Ironically, the front cover features a picture of a man, in trousers, and a woman, in a skirt}}

WARWICK, R.I.--It was a beautiful summer day on August 16, despite the dark cloud cast by the National Organization for Marriage's (NOM) first annual "Marriage and Family Day," a fundraiser to "celebrate marriage between one man and one women and the families that come from them."

The event, held at the Catholic Diocese-owned Aldrich Mansion, featured performances by Christian rock bands, a heterosexual-only marriage vows renewal ceremony and a speech by NOM president Maggie Gallagher.

Outside the Aldrich mansion, 50 lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) activists from two newly formed groups, the Providence Equality Action Committee (PEAC) and Queer Action of Rhode Island, lined the streets in protest under a banner that read, "We Solemnly Vow to Fight Against Inequality."

In a symbolic ceremony, PEAC members renewed their vows to fight the inequality and oppression that LGBT people face under the law.

PEAC is comprised of community groups, including Marriage Equality Rhode Island, and individuals who are united against oppression of LGBT people. Although PEAC takes on a broad range of LGBT issues, it recognizes marriage equality as the cutting edge of the struggle and is the leading organization in the state mobilizing for the National Equality March in Washington, D.C. ...

Activists will keep up the pressure to combat bigotry and put marriage equality on the table in Rhode Island.

(5) Protesters call for "marriage equality" for Gays & Lesbians - Socialist Worker

Debating the way forward for marriage equality

August 12, 2009

http://socialistworker.org/2009/08/12/way-forward-for-equal-marriage

{this webpage carries an ad for Leon Trotsky's book History of the Russian Revolution. Ironically, the front cover features a picture of a man, in trousers, and a woman, in a skirt}

Chuck Stemke, Ragina Johnson, Zakiya Khabir, Ashley Simmons and Cecile Veillard, activists in the fight for marriage equality in California, report on a recent summit that exposed differences in strategy among some groups in the movement for same-sex marriage rights--and a debate over whether it's too soon to push for full equality.

Protesters bring the demand for a repeal of Prop 8 to California's capital, Sacramento (Fritz Liess)

THE PASSAGE of California's Proposition 8 in last November's election not only ended the four-and-a-half-month period in which same-sex couples were able to legally marry in California, but it also proved to be the last straw for a whole new generation of activists. Since the vote, thousands have committed themselves to winning back marriage equality, once and for all.

The scale and tempo of the movement has been remarkable--it amounts to the greatest resurgence of LGBT activism in decades. In addition to longstanding organizations that over the years focused on fundraising in order to fuel a lobbying machine, there now exists, in cities large and small across California, activists and organizations who meet regularly to organize, discuss and protest. ...

(6) Australian Christians fight Gay Surrogacy laws

Christians to fight gay surrogacy laws

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,25948055-421,00.html

QUEENSLAND Labor MPs will be lobbied to vote down new laws allowing same-sex surrogacy arrangements.

Premier Anna Bligh has released a model for legal surrogacy in Queensland which is the only Australian state where altruistic surrogacy - where no money changes hands - is still illegal.

MPs will have a conscience vote on the laws, expected to go to parliament before the end of the year after public consultation.

Australian Christian Lobby Queensland director Peter Earle said same-sex surrogacy arrangements would deprive children of the complementary love and care of both a mother and a father. ...

(7) Repression of LBGT folks in Cuba and China is "Stalinist" {ie from a Trot perspective}

Repression, Hypocrisy and Sexuality
Mark Sanford, Sexual Liberation and LGBT Equality

By RON JACOBS

June 30, 2009

http://www.counterpunch.org/jacobs06302009.html

Thanks to the peccadilloes of South Carolina governor Mark Sanford, the question of sex and politics has once again been cheaply splashed across US newspapers, television and the internet once again. Although those of us who have nothing nice to say about this particular rightwing "Christian" moralist are enjoying watching the crocodile tears fall on his career of hate and intolerance, there is a part of each of us that finds absurd the notion that someone should end their political career because of their sexual life. ...

The most universal of these strictures, especially among religious fundamentalist and right wing political adherents is against the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LBGT) population. Gay marriage--no way. Gays rearing children--no way. Equal rights for those of a non heterosexual persuasion--special privileges, not equal rights. Anyhow, you get the picture. Homosexuals are somehow not quite human and therefore do not deserve to exercise their human rights. Meanwhile, when it comes to the liberal side of the US political spectrum one hears words in support of equal rights only to be all to often followed by a refusal to support those rights when it comes to actually passing legislation.

With the brashness of the Stonewall rioters and the insight developed through keen observation and years of activism, author Sherry Wolf explores the history and theory of sexual politics in the United States in her recently published Sexuality and Socialism: History, Politics, and Theory of LBGT Liberation. Wolf begins her text with a discussion of the roots of sexual oppression. By discussing the construction of homosexuality, she addresses the complementary construction of heterosexuality and the resulting dichotomization of human sexual experience. Working from an understanding that it is capitalism that creates this dichotomy, Wolf examines the contradiction of early industrial capitalism that allowed for the autonomy of human sexual practices while demanding the stratification of those practices to make it possible for capitalism to work. ...

An avowed socialist, Wolf does not only address the nature of sexual repression under the capitalist nations. She turns a critical eye towards those nations that called themselves socialist and breaks down the history and nature of those governments' repression of sexuality, especially that of LBGT peoples. Noting that immediately after the Russian Revolution of October 1917 all restrictions on sexual expression were removed from the criminal code, Wolf continues her history by noting that it was the pressures of the counterrevolution and eventual leadership of Stalin that followed the heady years of the Russian Revolution that saw the rollback to traditional sexual practices being encouraged and enforced in the Soviet Union. Wolf attributes the repression of LBGT folks in Cuba and China to their essentially Stalinist nature, while noting that within the US communist movement, gays and lesbians were purged from the Communist Party, USA under similar circumstances. Despite the essentially Victorian attitudes towards sexuality in the CPUSA, the struggle against these attitudes continued inside the party and throughout the leftist movement in the US. ... ==

Sexuality and Socialism: History, Politics, and Theory of LGBT Liberation (Paperback)
by Sherry Wolf (Author)
http://www.amazon.com/Sexuality-Socialism-History-Politics-Liberation/dp/1931859795

(8) Amsterdam's mayor, Job Cohen, was first public official to wed same-sex couples

Amsterdam's mayor supports gays in EU countries

http://transnews.exblog.jp/3013568/

THE HAGUE, April 24, 2006 (AFP) - The mayor of Amsterdam on Monday wrote to his counterparts in eight European Union countries urging them to allow gay people to marry and hold public demonstrations.

In a letter to the mayors of eight capital cities, Job Cohen said the fifth anniversary of same-sex marriages in the Netherlands was an "appropriate occasion" to ask for gay rights to be upheld elsewhere in Europe.

The letter, also sent to the EU Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini, called on European mayors to "adhere to the universal declaration of human rights, and to do everything in your political power to open up marriage for same sex couples and safeguard the right of public demonstrations in your city".

Cohen said he was "concerned" by measures taken in some cities to ban gay demonstrations.

"We are particularly concerned by the news that homophobic attitude and behaviour is propagated by measures and policies of local authorities in some of the new EU-member states," he added.

Cohen targeted the mayors of Dublin, Lisbon, Prague, Riga, Tallinn, Vienna, Vilnius and Warsaw in his letter.

In Portugal, a lesbian couple recently had their request for a marriage licence turned down, while Poland's president, Lech Kaczynski, banned several homosexual demonstrations when he was mayor of Warsaw....

On 1 April 2001, Mr Cohen became the very first public official to wed same-sex couples. The Netherlands was the first country in the world to allow gay and lesbians to legally marry. ...

(9) Gay lobby welcomes Frattini endorsement of Same-Sex Marriage for whole EU (2004)

ILGA-Europe welcomes Frattini statement on rights for same-sex partners

17/11/2004

http://www.ilga-europe.org/europe/media/ilga_europe_welcomes_frattini_statement_on_rights_for_same_sex_partners

ILGA-Europe welcomes Franco Frattini, Commissioner-Designate for Justice, Freedom and Security, statements on rights for same-sex partners in the EU.

During the hearings at the European Parliament (LIBE and JURI Committees) on 15-16 November 2004, Franco Frattini, responding to the questions from the members of the European Parliament, stated that same-sex partners who are legally recognised in one of the EU member states should enjoy the same legal recognition throughout the European Union. ...

Copyright 2009 ilga-europe.org
ILGA-Europe gratefully acknowledges financial support from:
"Equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex people in Europe"

(10) EU States warned to accept Same-Sex Marriage (2006)

Strasburg, Jan. 20, 2006 (CWNews.com)

http://www.catholicculture.org/news/features/index.cfm?recnum=41919

The justice minister of the European Union, Franco Frattini, announced this week at the EU parliament in Strasburg that member states which do not eliminate all forms of discrimination against homosexuals, including the refusal to approve "marriage" and unions between same-sex couples, would be subject to sanctions and eventual expulsion from the EU.  ... ==

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-sex_marriage_in_Ireland

During his November 2004 nomination hearings, European Union Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini said that states are obliged to recognise the family life of couples in non-marital relationships under the provisions regarding free-movement of people from one state to another in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, part of the yet-to-be-ratified Treaty of Lisbon.[5] In May 2006 a reform of EU residency rules took effect, including the right of gay couples to reside anywhere in the EU and have their relationship 'facilitated'.[6]

This page was last modified on 27 June 2009 at 20:30.

(11) EU condemns "homophobia", demands Poland allow promotion of homosexuality in schools

http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/2144

Europe's Culture War: Secularism on the March

From the desk of Paul Belien on Wed, 2007-05-23 07:41

Europe is in the middle of a three-way culture war, between the defenders of traditional Judeo-Christian morality, the proponents of secular hedonism and the forces of Islamic Jihadism. In Western Europe, the fight between Christians and secularists is all but over. The secularists have won. Now, the religious vacuum left by the demise of Christianity is being filled by the Muslims. Since one cannot fight something with nothing, the European secularists are no match for Islam.

Meanwhile, the dark forces of secularism, such as the European Union (EU), are waging war in Central and Eastern Europe, where they target countries such as Poland, Slovakia and the Baltic states.

On April 25, the European Parliament (EP), the EU's legislature, adopted a resolution condemning "homophobia." With 325 votes against 124 and 150 abstentions, the EP warned Poland that it will face sanctions if it adopts a law barring the promotion of homosexuality in schools. Churches, too, were reprimanded for "fermenting hatred and violence [against homosexuals]." Poland's prime minister, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, commented on the resolution: "Nobody is limiting gay rights in Poland. However, if we're talking about not having homosexual propaganda in Polish schools... such propaganda should not be in schools." Cardinal Angelo Scola of Venice retorted: "There is no homophobia in the Catholic Church and it is time that all this [recrimination of Christians in the European Parliament] ended."

It is not likely to end. The fight against "intolerance" -- i.e. adherence to traditional Christian morality -- is intensifying. On May 3, the European Court of Human Rights found Polish President Lech Kaczynski guilty of violating human rights because he banned a "gay pride" parade in Warsaw in 2005. Last March, the same court ordered Poland to compensate a woman who was denied an abortion. Last year, Poland was denounced by the Council of Europe because it prohibited the distribution in schools of a leaflet about homosexuality.

When Poland joined the EU in May 2004, it did so on condition that "no EU treaties or annexes to those treaties would hamper the Polish government in regulating moral issues or those concerning the protection of human life." However, in January 2006 the European Parliament called for "tough action" against Poland and the Baltic states, while Franco Frattini, the EU justice commissioner, warned that the EU has powers under Article 13 of the EU Treaty to combat homophobia. The move came after Latvia included an amendment in its constitution that restricts marriage to a man and a woman, and Estonia proposed similar legislation. Some members of the European Parliament have called for punishing Poland and the Baltic states by suspending their voting rights in EU councils. ...

(12) EU: 'Accept same-sex marriage or face expulsion'

Friday, January 05, 2007

http://archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.com/2007/01/eu-accept-same-sex-marriage-or-face.html

Cranmer is indebted to his communicant Mr Voyager for bringing his attention to this most interesting report from the Catholic World News. The EU's justice minister, Franco Frattini, who is by all accounts a Freemason, has announced that EU member states 'which do not eliminate all forms of discrimination against homosexuals, including the refusal to approve "marriage" and unions between same-sex couples, would be subject to sanctions and eventual expulsion from the EU'.

What sanctions, precisely? And by what authority? Cranmer is less than clear of the role played by homosexual marriage in the functioning of the single market.

It is ironic that Frattini, who was elected EU commissioner after the EU parliament rejected the nomination of the Catholic intellectual Rocco Buttiglione, is free to impose his Masonic amorality upon us all, while Buttiglione was rejected because of his Catholic worldview and support of the traditional family.

However, the demand is that the United Kingdom conform, or be expelled from the EU.

O, please, God, please…

(13) Michael Kirby supports elite (Executive + Judiciary) making Treaties without popular assent

International law: the impact on national constitutions

by Michael Kirby AC CMG

{Justice Michael Kirby was a High Court judge in Australia and a leading Gay figure. It appears that he lived a Gay lifestyle even before it became legal. He endorses the Elite's making International Treaties which bind the majority against their will}

Image: The courtroom of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands.

The original speech transcript is located at the Australian high Court website, and for study purposes we recommend you visit that page: the speech is referenced with 152 footnotes in the original. <http://www.hcourt.gov.au/speeches/kirbyj/kirbyj_30mar05.html>

International law: the impact on national constitutions
The 7th Annual Grotius Lecture, delivered to the American Society of International Law in Washington on March 30 2005 by High Court Justice Michael Kirby AC CMG.

http://www.safecom.org.au/kirby-lecture.htm

... Fourthly, opponents point to the fact that the making of international law is substantially in the hands of the Executive Government, which ordinarily initiates involvement in the process of treaty negotiation and commences or controls the procedures of ratification. It was this concern that led Justice Iacobucci in the Supreme Court of Canada to express reservations about incorporating international law by the "back door" without parliamentary endorsement.

Similar views have been expressed in Australia, defensive of the legislature's veto over incorporation into municipal law of treaty provisions ratified by the Executive. Particularly in countries which, unlike the United States, have no constitutional provision for a legislative veto over treaties, this can be a very practical consideration.

... Jed Rubenfeld describes international law as "undemocratic" and its organs as "famous for their ... opacity, remoteness from popular or representative politics, elitism and unaccountability". ...

There are many answers to these anxieties. The function of a judiciary is inescapably elitist, at least to some extent. ...

(14) UN Committee says Gay/Lesbian/Transgender "Human Rights" override national laws

UN Committee Includes Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity as Grounds for Non-Discrimination
06/01/2009

http://www.iglhrc.org/cgi-bin/iowa/article/takeaction/resourcecenter/914.html

On May 25, 2009, the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights adopted General Comment No. 20, about the meaning of equality in their treaty, that responded to a recommendation from IGLHRC, ARC International, and the International Gay and Lesbian Association (ILGA) to include sexual orientation and Gender Identity as grounds for non-discrimination. The three organizations made this recommendation in a joint submission to the committee in December 2008. The committee is a body of independent experts that oversees states' compliance with the UN Convention on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights.

The General Comment says that states "should ensure that a person's sexual orientation is not a barrier to realizing Covenant rights, for example, in accessing survivor's pension rights," and that "persons who are transgender, transsexual or intersex often face serious human rights violations, such as harassment in schools or in the work place."

The comment also references the Yogyakarta Principles, which describe how international human rights law applies to sexual orientation and Gender Identity. This is the first time that a treaty body has mentioned Gender Identity and the Yogyakarta Principles <http://www.yogyakartaprinciples.org/> in a General Comment, and that sexual orientation and Gender Identity will be used as criteria to consider states' compliance with this treaty. Click here to read the joint NGO submission and here to read the General Comment (Microsoft Word Document).
<http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/cescr/docs/gc/E.C.12.GC.20.doc>

(15) Yogyakarta Principles specify International Human Rights Law on Gender Identity
The Yogyakarta Principles

The Application of International Human Rights Law in relation to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity

http://www.yogyakartaprinciples.org/
http://www.yogyakartaprinciples.org/principles_en.htm

Yogyakarta Principles on the Application of International Human Rights Law in relation to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity

The Yogyakarta Principles address a broad range of human rights standards and their application to issues of sexual orientation and Gender Identity. ==

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Committee_on_Economic,_Social_and_Cultural_Rights.

Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights

The Committee on Social Economic and Cultural Rights is a United Nations body of 18 experts that meets three times a year to consider the five-yearly reports submitted by UN member states on their compliance with the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). Members are elected for a term of four years by States parties in accordance with ECOSOC Resolution 1985/17 of 28 May 1985. Members serve in their personal capacity and may be re-elected if nominated. ...

(16) Cuban human rights examined by UN council

Tim Anderson20 June 2009

http://www.greenleft.org.au/2009/799/41164

Here's something you won't hear from the corporate media: Cuba's human rights record was examined by the United Nation's Human Rights Council (UNHRC), and the country came out looking pretty good. ...

Since 2006, Cuba has participated more freely in the UNHRC as it has become a more equitable process than the old UN Commission on Human Rights. The voting structure allows a wider range of countries to participate and the main accountability process is the "universal periodic review" (UPR), which applies to all countries. ...

The structure of a UPR leads to the subject state either accepting, considering or rejecting submissions. The UNHRC report on Cuba, like all UPR reports, summarises the scrutiny process and sets out the state's responses to the criticism or praise. ...

(17) U.N. Committee demands that Japan set up a Human Rights watchdog
http://japanfocus.org/-Lawrence-Repeta/3147

U.N. Committee Faults Japan Human Rights Performance, Demands Progress Report on Key Issues

Lawrence Repeta

Introduction

How can Japan move toward gender equality, the elimination of authoritarian police practices and realization of the human rights enshrined in its laws and treaty obligations? Many Japanese human rights lawyers and activists believe that one important path forward lies through international institutions, especially those created under the auspices of the United Nations. In the latest round of an ongoing battle to enforce international norms in Japan, lawyers and activists presented a powerful case before the UN Human Rights Committee in Geneva and succeeded in persuading the Committee to deliver stinging criticisms of Japan's failures to take action to remedy several longstanding human rights problems.

The World's Most Important Human Rights Treaty and Japan

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (the "Covenant" or "ICCPR"), adopted by UN General Assembly resolution in 1966, is the most comprehensive and widely recognized human rights treaty. More than 160 states have ratified the Covenant. Japan did so in 1979. The Covenant does more than merely proclaim a long list of civil and political human rights. It also imposes obligations on member states to take action to promote observance of those rights through such action as adopting appropriate legislation, insuring that victims of right abuse have access to effective remedies, and training government officials (including judges) in their obligations to enforce the Covenant. The implications of Japan's access to the Covenant have only gradually become apparent over the past four decades.

The United Nations Human Rights Committee, a body led by 18 individuals elected for four year terms, is charged with monitoring compliance. Its primary tool to do so is created by Article 40 of the Covenant, which requires each member country to submit periodic reports "on the measures they have adopted" to give effect to treaty rights "and on the progress they have made in the enjoyment of those rights." (Treaty Text)

When the Government of Japan submitted its fifth such report in December 2006, it opened the door to a three-cornered debate among government officials, representatives of civil society organizations, and the UN Human Rights Committee, the entity created by the treaty to monitor compliance. This exchange culminated in two days of live public hearings before the Committee held at the Palais de Nations in Geneva on October 15-16, 2008 and by the Committee's issuance of "Concluding Observations" on October 30. Composed of 34 numbered paragraphs of comments and recommendations, the Observations sharply criticized the Japanese government's failure to take action to address several longstanding human rights problems and recommended a number of specific remedial actions. (Observations)

We will review the Committee's statement and the process that led up to it, evaluate its conclusions, and consider the effect it may have on human rights development in Japan.

Key Comments and Recommendations by the Human Rights Committee

Because the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights is a comprehensive human rights treaty, the ground to be covered in member states' periodic reports is vast, as is the responsibility of the Committee as the monitoring body. Accordingly, the Concluding Observations issued by the Committee on October 30, 2008 cover a wide range of topics, including discriminatory treatment of women and non-Japanese persons, unrestricted interrogation of criminal suspects, poor treatment of prisoners, the lack of prosecution of perpetrators of crimes related to human trafficking, unreasonable restrictions of free speech, and disregard of the Committee's longstanding recommendation that Japan establish an independent institution charged with protecting human rights. ... ==

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

(New York, 16 December 1966)

http://Www.Austlii.Edu.Au/Au/Other/Dfat/Treaties/1980/23.Html

(18) Obama backs bill to enforce LGBT & Transgender rights at work

From: Peter Marshall <p_marshall@tsn.cc> Date: 17.02.2009 08:43 AM From: m.f@zoomtown.com

HATE BILLS MOVE FORWARD IN HOUSE JUDICIARY

http://truthtellers.org/alerts/hatebillsfowardhousejudandvid.htm

By Rev. Ted Pike

16 Feb 09

... don't vote for the Employment Nondiscrimination Act (ENDA). Hate and bias crime laws took away free speech in Canada and much of Europe." ==

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Employment_Non-Discrimination_Act

The Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), is a proposed bill in the United States Congress that would prohibit discrimination against employees on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability. Such protections are already available to employees of the federal government through executive orders for sexual orientation and gender identity in 1998 and 2009 respectively; this would extend them to employees in the private sector (religious organizations exempted).

ENDA has been introduced in every Congress, except the 109th, since 1994, albeit without gender identity protections, but gained its best chance at passing after the Democratic Party broke twelve years of Republican Congressional rule in the 2006 midterm elections. Sponsors found that even with a Democratic majority, ENDA did not have enough votes to pass the House of Representatives with transgender inclusion, and dropped it from the bill, where it passed and subsequently died in the Senate. LGBT advocacy organizations were divided over support of the changed bill.

In 2009, on the heels of the 2008 elections that strengthened the Democratic majority, and after the debacle of the 2007 ENDA divisions, only a transgender-inclusive ENDA has been introduced by House representative Barney Frank. President Barack Obama supports the bill's passage unlike his Republican predecessor, who threatened to veto the measure. ...

This page was last modified on 14 August 2009 at 13:24.

(19) Obama admin calls statute that bars benefits for same-sex marriages "discriminatory"

DOJ Shifts Tone on Marriage Act

By EVAN PEREZ

AUGUST 18, 2009

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125052020027636969.html

WASHINGTON -- The Obama administration shifted its tone on a federal marriage law, calling the statute that bars federal benefits for same-sex marriages "discriminatory" even as it filed a legal defense of the law.

The Justice Department on Monday filed its latest defense of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, citing mostly technical arguments to justify Congress's decision to define marriage as between one man and one woman. The department's last filing, in June, angered gay-rights groups, in part because it largely repeated arguments made by the Bush administration. The June filing said, in part, that the marriage law "reflects a cautiously limited response to society's still-evolving understanding of the institution of marriage."

The latest court filing by Tony West, assistant attorney general, showed a marked change in the tone. Mr. West noted that "this Administration does not support DOMA as a matter of policy, believes that it is discriminatory, and supports its repeal." Rather, the filing said, the Justice Department was following standard practice of defending the constitutionality of laws passed by Congress.

President Barack Obama also issued a statement on the matter, saying he believes the Clinton-era law prevents same-sex couples "from being granted equal rights and benefits."

The biggest California gay rights advocacy group said August 12, 2009 that it needed three years to build a coalition to repeal a ban on same-sex marriage in the state.

Gay-rights groups have complained that Mr. Obama has been slow to move on pledges he made as a candidate to repeal policies deemed discriminatory against gay people. Among those: the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy, which prohibits openly gay people from serving in the military, and the Defense of Marriage Act, which allows states to ignore same-sex unions from other states and bars the federal government from granting marriage benefits to couples in such unions.

The president repeated his pledges during a White House reception in June to mark the 40th anniversary of the modern gay-rights movement. But with the administration consumed with fights over health care and energy, the White House hasn't prodded allies in Congress to take up gay rights.

The new tack doesn't go far enough to tackle discrimination, one gay-rights activist said. Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay-rights group, said in a statement: "While they contend that it is the DOJ's duty to defend an act of Congress, we contend that it is the administration's duty to defend every citizen from discrimination."

Write to Evan Perez at evan.perez@wsj.com