U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton challenged nations around the world Tuesday to recognize that "gay rights are human rights and human rights are gay rights," building on an order by President Barack Obama directing all U.S. agencies to "promote and protect" the rights of gay people,
In an impassioned defense of such rights, Clinton called the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people "universal" and criticized nations that criminalize gay behavior or tolerate abuse of gay, bisexual or transgendered people. Clinton made the unusually strong speech as Obama announced a presidential directive to use U.S. foreign aid to promote rights for gays and lesbians abroad, including combating attempts by foreign governments to criminalize homosexuality and making treatment of gays a factor in awarding foreign aid. The remarks were meant to mark Human Rights Day, which is Saturday. The date commemorates the 1948 signing of the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights. Speaking to the U.N. Human Rights Council, before an audience that included diplomats from Arab, African and other countries with poor records on gay rights, Clinton said religious beliefs and cultural practices are no excuse for discriminating or tolerating violence against gay people.
"No practice or tradition trumps the human rights that belong to all of us, and this holds true for inflicting violence on LGBT people," she said. "It is a violation of human rights when people are beaten or killed because of their sexual orientation, or because they do not conform to cultural norms about how men and women should look or behave." Clinton recognized America's own record on LGBT equality is "far from perfect." She called laws discriminating against gays or tolerating abuse against them a violation of human rights and rejected the notion espoused by some nations that "homosexuality is a Western phenomenon and therefore people from outside the West have grounds to reject it."
By Elise Labott, CNN