I don’t know the Maldivian word for cohones, but Maldivian UN Special Rapporteur Ahmad Shaheed got him some heuvos grande. Shadheed says any who follows a religion should ignore that religion and follow him and his expert-created UN-religion instead. Ay!
He said, “I firmly reject any claim that religious beliefs can be invoked as a legitimate ‘justification’ for violence or discrimination against women, girls or LGBT+ people”.
Points for the scare quotes around justification, as if God saying that sodomy is bad is just, like, God’s unjustified opinion, man.
He said “laws based in traditional morality, often religious in nature, should be repealed if they conflict with the opinions of human rights scholars and UN experts.”
We haven’t had a man make the kind of bold claim that he knows what’s best and true about how all should live since Charles Manson.
The UN said:
In his report, the UN expert urges States to repeal gender-based discrimination laws, including those enacted with reference to religious considerations that criminalize adultery; criminalize persons on the basis of their actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity; criminalize abortion in all cases; and facilitate religious practices that violate human rights.
“Women and LGBT+ people experience discrimination and violence inflicted in the name of religion by State and non-State actors that impedes their ability to fully enjoy their human rights, including their right to freedom of religion or belief,” said Mr. Shaheed.
I think it was Hugh Hefner—historians, correct me here—a man who died masturbating to gay porn—who first argued for the full enjoyment of his own human rights. How’d that work out, Hef?
It didn’t work out. As the saying goes, all porn is gay.
Listen, there is no greater UN-evil, or unevil if you like, than discrimination. If the UN takes over for religion, then discrimination would be banned. If you can’t discriminate against “sexual orientation”, then whatever a man wants to plug—a euphemism—is fair game. That includes your kids. Your pet goldfish. Your pencil sharpener. Even you. An orientation is an orientation. So get yourself some soap on a rope now. If the coronavirus panic buyers haven’t snapped it all up already.
Shaheed might have watching the same material as Hefner:
“Religious communities are not monolithic. In many religions, a plurality of self-understandings exists, some of which may be more committed than others to advancing gender equality and non-discrimination”, the UN expert added.
“While religious organizations are entitled to autonomy in the administration of their affairs, such deference should be extended within a holistic conception of rights grounded in the universality, indivisibility, interdependence and inalienability of all human rights.
“States have an obligation to guarantee to everyone, including women, girls and LGBT+ people, an equal right to freedom of religion or belief, including by creating an enabling environment where pluralist and progressive self-understandings can manifest,” Shaheed said.
Wonderfully incomprehensible, that. All have perfect freedom of religion, as long as that religion is Un-religion, or unreligion. Unreligion is universal, the one-world religion man has always longed for. Well, some men.
A founding tenet of unreligion is “rights”, i.e. Greed, Pride, Equality. It’s chant is I deserve.
Reality-based religions will have nothing to do with the contemptible concepts of Equality and perversion. But unreligion welcomes and insists upon them.
Reality says men and women can never be equal, because they are men and women, and men and women are not the same thing, and things that are not the same thing cannot be the same.
Unreligion says all are equal, and that not only are men and women the same thing, but because we cannot discriminate against the T in LGBT, any man can be a woman and any woman a man. If they say it, it is true. Desire trumps Reality.
Reality says non-procreative sex-like activities that purposely avoid contraception and birth are evil and harm the species. Reality is scientific and moral.
Unreligion says momentary pleasure is paramount. (At least unreligion consistent and is against the practice of slicing off women’s private parts.)
Unreligion says (in the official report) there has been “insufficient progress on structural issues at the root of gender inequality, such as legal discrimination, unfair social norms and attitudes, decision-making on sexual and reproductive issues and low levels of political participation.”
Low levels of political participation? Reality says that if you let women vote on whether it is good to kill their own children, that they will disappoint you every time.
Unreligion says religious belief is best decided at universities like Harvard, which are under strict control of peers.
Reality says this is nuts.
The proper response to screeds like that from this UN buffoon is a shotgun to the face. I will also accept a short length of rope and a tall tree as a quieter alternative.
They are beyond logical, polite debate. They simply want power. This particular evil exemplar attempted a coup in his native Maldives and failed. “He now lives in England, as Visiting Professor of Human Rights Practice at the University of Essex.”
In a free society – one in which freedom of religion is fundamental in the law- what religious criteria is best invoked to outlaw certain things or behaviors?
What difference does outlawing them make? The targeted people and their behaviors do not change, just go incognito.
What religious criteria is best invoked into this free society with religious freedom (including no religion) enshrined by law — to suppress or outlaw certain private behaviors per religion AND take an aggressive step of invoking discrimination (I.e, anti-freedom)?
How does a religion that espouses the principle – from God – to “love the sinner but hate the sin” justify belittling advocacy of gender-based discrimination as was done above? (No distinction in the critique presented parsed purely gender-based discrimination from the other forms listed).
Some of us would like to see some self-critical analysis along the lines of “equality” and how that seeming simple concept leads to fundamental issues. Specifically, if some religiously-based criteria is to be applied to a free society can that society remain free?
That this basic assessment remains sidestepped suggests not.
Which leads to an unavoidable corollary – if “religion” is to be applied as basis for legislation, which one???
Saying “Christianity” says nothing – for example would that be the Billion year or 10,000 year old Earth version (directly impacts textbook choices). Are gays really so bad-some Episcopal versions think not. And so on.
Invoking a religious basis for some advocated social control is very compelling — but doing so puts one on the fast track to deciding which of the many competing religions just within “Christianity” is correct — identifying all the others as wrong.
Anybody got the cohones to start addressing that?
Uh-ohhh, Matty’s been drinkin’ deep from the religionists’ Kool-Aid yet again; Somewhere, Jim Jones is smiling.
Who cares what some of these leftist lunatics think at the UN think about anything…is anyone going to change their views on religion, ethics or philosophy just because some think that way? These people don’t have a first clue about about how natural, inalienable rights and human dignity actually work.
As nuts as this gibberish is, it reminds me how difficult it is to respect freedom of religion. Right now, a large percentage of Muslims hold beliefs that are the same as that of their founder. Those beliefs are not pluralistic or tolerant, and require the subjugation of all peoples who don’t hold them.
Over its history, Islam has more than once become more tolerant and “pluralist,” only to be reformed to its roots. We in the West trying to figure out how to come to grips with Islam would very much like an Islam that is “unreformed,” as it were. We talk about “encouraging moderate Muslims,” as if we have any say in how Muslims understand their religion, although we would sure hate for them to tell us how to understand ours. But as confused as we are about Islam (a pluralist society, it seems, has no idea what to do about a non-pluralist one it cant’ simply avoid), we know that if Islam isn’t “moderate” or “pluralist,” we are in big trouble. This is just more of the same — a UN wonk understanding that the behavior he would like to see will never happen unless he gets to say what religions can and can’t do, teach, and require. The only way to really respect other religions is to let them be what they are, but that might mean having to fight the people who hold them — who don’t agree that we have the right to be what WE are. We in the West are so afraid of that, that most of us have stop having any religious beliefs in the hope that it will make us peaceable and happy, neither of which it does. The more obvious it is that this is not going to work out, the more people seem to insist on totalitarian forms of secularism. It seems to be working on containing us, and the secularists of the world are banking that they can make it work to contain everyone else. The rest of the world may not prove to be so amenable.
G.K.Chesterton once wrote that if a man is appointed Minister for Faeries in the Lower Garden, do not expect him to announce that there are no faeries in the lower garden.
The same applies to under-secretaries, czars, and special prosecutors.
Ken: “In a free society – one in which freedom of religion is fundamental in the law- what religious criteria is best invoked to outlaw certain things or behaviors?”
The religious principle that notes that God forbids certain behaviors not arbitrarily but because He knows better than we do how a sane and stable human society best operates. You assume that all religions are arbitrary and that all doctrine is aimed at spoiling anyone’s fun.
I would argue to the contrary, starting with the argument laid out in David Goldman’s “How Civilizations Die”, which makes the case that we’re currently in the fourth (at least) great collapse of Western Civilization, following the Minoans, Classical Greeks, and Romans. Funny thing, all of these were due to pretty much the same set of causes, starting with the destruction of the family and an embrace of sexual libertinism.
Actions have consequences. Perhaps the Church simply remembers a thing or two.
Ken asks: In a free society – one in which freedom of religion is fundamental in the law- what religious criteria is best invoked to outlaw certain things or behaviors?
@ Paul of Alexandria
RE Your last remark- Which Church?
And why is it so ineffectual?
When you cite ‘He (deity) knows best’ Christians will all agree.
But when one cites what some specific “best” is for some specific situation…the controversy erupts (sort of) among Christians. So many differing contradictory views.
Thus, moral persuasion about Briggs’ favorite themes is undermined by the heresies masquerading as truth within the cited religion.
As long as heresy is ignored the adverse trends observed will continue.
Instead of bemoaning what some lunatic on the Left says you should be attacking heresy that undermines religion (Christianity) from within.
Get the log out of your eye! First.
Until then, this house divided (and dividing) will continue to crumble and continue to be increasingly ineffectual.
But alas, very very few have the courage to confront a fellow Christian faith and challenge them on their heresies. So enamored by the umbrella label are so many.
E Burke noted that evil triumphs when good men do nothing. Keep that up and still be surprised how society is trending!…are you really that dense?
Get thelogoutofyoureye!
When immoral desires become legal rights, all hell can and does break loose, because it has been invited to do so.
Rather, remain with Christ, in His Peace.
God bless, C-Marie
@Ken –
A “free society” is a contradiction and a paradox.
“Religious freedom” is the end of society, and thus evil.
“Points for the scare quotes around justification, as if God saying that sodomy is bad is just, like, God’s unjustified opinion, man.”
God’s opinions are, by definition, unjustified. God can’t appeal to any justification, reasoning, or standard outside of himself, hence his opinions are unjustified.
I am not sure God requires any other Standard by which to justify an opinion by virtue of being the Creator. In any case I am not sure God has opinions as such.
Notice how facilely he bundles together “violence against women and girls” and “discrimination against LGBTQ+”!