December 9, 2010

NEW YORK, December 9 (C-FAM) A new campaign seeks to eliminate disclosure laws which require HIV positive individuals to inform their sex partners of their potentially deadly infection.

The campaign is led by the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) and UNAIDS, an umbrella group of UN agencies. Notably absent from this campaign is any recognition of the danger posed for the possible victims of a willful refusal to disclose HIV status.

As part of the campaign, IPPF released a collection of interviews entitled “Behind Bars”, which implies that such criminal laws fuel stigma against HIV persons. Proponents of criminal laws assert they are designed to help protect and prevent sexual partners from contracting a potentially deadly virus.

Some of the testimony of the interviewees in “Behind Bars” directly contradicts the assertions made by IPPF. An Egyptian doctor states that irresponsible behavior which results in a car accident deserves punishment just like the failure to disclose one’s HIV status before engaging in sexual activity deserves punishment: “In the same way, if someone who knows that he is HIV positive is careless and just allows my son or my daughter to become HIV infected I would feel the same.”

“Behind Bars” is part of a larger IPPF campaign, “Criminalize Hate Not HIV”, launched at the International Aids Conference in Vienna in July. IPPF describes laws that make willful transmission of HIV to another person as too-costly, hindrances to prevention, and stigmatizing. The video promo [WARNING: EXPLICIT CONTENT] for the campaign depicts various sexual scenes. The video appears to promote homosexual sex, drug use, and prostitution, which are listed by the Center for Disease Control as three of the most high risk behaviors responsible for the transmission of HIV.

“This clearly shows that IPPF believes that illicit sex is more important that life itself – and they are willing to risk other people’s lives to advance their sexual agenda,” said Wendy Wright, President of Concerned Women for America.

UNAIDS and the World Health Organization sponsored this year’s International Aids Conference. IPPF and UNAIDS collaborated in sponsoring the “Stigma Index”, whose website contains a major section calling for the decriminalization of HIV transmission.

IPPF contends, “The drive for criminalization of willful transmission of HIV is proving a costly intervention – in terms of time and money spent on investigating individual’s private lives and determining the burden of proof – and seems to have had limited impact on HIV prevention.”

However, Wendy Wright told the Friday Fax that the costs of enforcing the laws are dwarfed in comparison to the costs associated with HIV/AIDS.

In March, IPPF made available their sex guide [EXPLICIT], “Healthy, Happy, and Hot” at a UN event sponsored by the Girl Scouts. The brochure states, “Some countries have laws that violate the right of young people living with HIV to decide whether to disclose…These laws violate the rights of people living with HIV by forcing them to disclose or face the possibility of criminal charges.”

December 9, 2010

Homosexual Activists Launch New Guide to Make Homosexual “Rights” A Reality

NEW YORK, December 9 (C-FAM) Homosexual activists just launched a new “toolkit” which outlines methods to promote a controversial document which asserts that states have a legal obligation to fulfill “rights” to gay adoption, reproductive technologies and state-funded sex changes.

Drafted in 2007 by a select group of human rights “experts,” including UN special rapporteurs and UN treaty body members, the non-binding Yogyakarta Principles propose reinterpretions of long-established human rights to include special rights for homosexuals.

The Principles in effect downgrade traditional rights such as freedom of expression and religion stating where they conflict with “the rights of freedoms of persons of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities.”

Proponents insist that the Yogyakarta Principles are not simply an ‘aspirational wish list’ and call the new toolkit a powerful advocacy document “that can equip the community to use international human rights law in the domestic sphere – otherwise there is this big divide between the worlds of international human rights law and grassroots advocacy.”

Claiming that “every successful legal challenge brought to the high court of any country since 2005 has involved some reference to the Yogyakarta Principles,” the new toolkit consists of an activist guide and a new website that track where activists have used them in court cases.

The website lists citations from court decisions and most notably, in a recent document from the UN committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights which asserts that “gender identity” and “sexual orientation” are new categories of non-discrimination, an assertion opposed by a majority of UN Member States.  

Conservatives fear that activists will use the citations to argue that there is a new “international consensus” on homosexual rights and pressure countries to change their legislation and policies.  

Piero Tozzi, Senior Legal Counsel with the Alliance Defense Fund’s global practice group, stresses that multiple citations of the Yogyakarta Principles do not mean there is a new international norm.  Tozzi explains that customary international law is not created merely by repetition, but develops out of the ‘general and persistent’ practice of states followed out of a sense of obligation over a long period of time.

He adds that international law “is not an empty vessel into which currently politically correct content can be poured into and labeled ‘customary.’”

While the toolkit suggests that the UN has shown wider acceptance of the Yogyakarta Principles, delegations have been pushing back whenever language pertaining to “sexual orientation” or the Yogyakarta Principles appear in UN documents.  Expressing fear over the lack of definition, just last month delegates successfully fought to delete “sexual orientation” out of a resolution over fears that it would later be used to push for “controversial agendas.”

Despite successfully combating pressure to include “sexual orientation” language last month, delegates expect to see more attempts to reference the Yogyakarta Principles in upcoming UN meetings, particularly in the lead up to the UN High Level Review on HIV/AIDS scheduled for next summer.