Add your nameReligious liberty does not exclude global LGBTQ rights

Posted: July 17, 2020

It's official: At the Trump-Pompeo State Department, when it comes to human rights, the religious right's twisted version of religious liberty is in and LGBTQ and women's rights are out.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's Commission on Unalienable Rights released its official report July 16, effectively calling for a hierarchy of human rights grounded in private "property rights and religious liberty." The report ignored long-standing U.S. policy that all rights are equal, arguing, "Decisions about the priority of rights are not only inescapable but desirable."

Since its beginning, the commission has been driven by the Secretary's evangelical beliefs. Pompeo stacked the group with notorious right-wing professors and theologians -- not diplomats and human-rights experts.

Their goal is clear: Overturn LGBTQ and women's rights, and please Trump's white-evangelical base with an artificially narrow view of religious liberty.

We can't sit by silently while the administration portrays this as a universal Christian view. The State Department is now collecting public comments about the dangerous report, with a July 30 deadline. Add your name today so we can include 10,000 signatures on our official submission.

Sign the petition:

Dear Secretary Pompeo, Ambassador Glendon, and Unalienable Rights Commissioners,

As Christians, we believe in the dignity of all people, which is why we are alarmed by new attacks on human rights from the United States Department of State. The draft report from the department's Commission on Unalienable Rights offers a dangerously narrow understanding of human rights, one that will undermine the international human rights system. We are especially concerned about a potential deprioritization and lack of respect from the State Department for women's rights and LGBTQ rights.

While the report denies that it sees to establish a "hierarchy of human rights," its claim that "decisions about the priority of rights are not only inescapable but desirable" and that "Foremost among the unalienable rights that government is established to secure... are property rights and religious liberty" indicate otherwise. Secretary Pompeo's incendiary language announcing the draft -- including his labeling of the New York Times' Pulitzer-Prize winning re-examination of slavery, the 1619 Project, as "Marxist" -- further indicate the true scale of the report's potentially devastating impact. Referring to such human rights as LGBTQ protections as "divisive social and political controversies" encourages authoritarian regimes and threatens the safety of countless people around the world.

Individual nations should not have the ability to unilaterally decide which human rights matter and which do not. We ask that the State Department reject the Commission's report and recommit to defending all human rights, without preference or priority for some rights over others. We cherish our religious liberty, but it is not an excuse to ignore the suffering or God-given dignity of others.

Sincerely,
The Undersigned Members of Faithful America

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