UN General Assembly: Summary execution of queers okay

[Julie]

I am pretty blown away by this. I had no idea, until I read your posting and read the Reuters reporting.

I work for a NGO UN organization. I am really upset. I am not sure how I am supposed to ever step foot into the UN again.

I have just written my director and am composing letters to those I know at the UN. Not that it will do any good...
Except to sign my name - This could be me! This could happen to ME!
WTF?

[AtLast]

Originally Posted by InfiniteFemme

I am pretty blown away by this. I had no idea, until I read your posting and read the Reuters reporting.

I work for a NGO UN organization. I am really upset. I am not sure how I am supposed to ever step foot into the UN again.I have just written my director and am composing letters to those I know at the UN. Not that it will do any good...
Except to sign my name - This could be me! This could happen to ME!
WTF?

Amazing... and goes directly to what this really means! Not just something "out there" happening to other people! If you can, let us know what response, if any, you receive.

[Apocalipstic]

Originally Posted by InfiniteFemme

I am pretty blown away by this. I had no idea, until I read your posting and read the Reuters reporting.

I work for a NGO UN organization. I am really upset. I am not sure how I am supposed to ever step foot into the UN again.

I have just written my director and am composing letters to those I know at the UN. Not that it will do any good...
Except to sign my name - This could be me! This could happen to ME!
WTF?

Did the USA actually vote for it?

Look at the things the US has done to many of the nations who voted against it. For 100's of years. Why should they respect our opinions?

We need to lead by example and make sure our allies are there for voting!

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by apocalipstic

Did the USA actually vote for it?

Look at the things the US has done to many of the nations who voted against it. For 100's of years. Why should they respect our opinions?

We need to lead by example and make sure our allies are there for voting!

It shouldn't matter what our opinions are on the matter. Each delegate, at the behest of and full knowledge of their foreign minister and head of government and/or head of state cast this vote themselves. They cast a vote knowing what they were voting for. They cast this vote knowing the implications and their national motivations for doing so. They cast a vote to remove queers from the umbrella of protection so that they need not worry about AI or the IRC or the UN looking for their shoulders should they decide to undertake an orgy of violence against queers in their nation. The United States didn't make them take that vote.

These are full moral agents from nations that are capable of acting as full moral agents. NOTHING we could ever say or do would make their vote okay in my book. Nothing. if we were bombing their nations randomly because it was Monday their vote would be immoral. If we yearly sent each nation our GDP as foreign aid, their vote would STILL be immoral. If we pretended that they didn't exist at all, their vote would remain immoral.

Cheers
Aj

[Apocalipstic]

Originally Posted by dreadgeek

It shouldn't matter what our opinions are on the matter. Each delegate, at the behest of and full knowledge of their foreign minister and head of government and/or head of state cast this vote themselves. They cast a vote knowing what they were voting for. They cast this vote knowing the implications and their national motivations for doing so. They cast a vote to remove queers from the umbrella of protection so that they need not worry about AI or the IRC or the UN looking for their shoulders should they decide to undertake an orgy of violence against queers in their nation. The United States didn't make them take that vote.

These are full moral agents from nations that are capable of acting as full moral agents. NOTHING we could ever say or do would make their vote okay in my book. Nothing. if we were bombing their nations randomly because it was Monday their vote would be immoral. If we yearly sent each nation our GDP as foreign aid, their vote would STILL be immoral. If we pretended that they didn't exist at all, their vote would remain immoral.

Cheers
Aj

I agree. It is horrible and imoral.

I just dont know how writing angry letters to US delegates is going to help anything.

[Apocalipstic]

I believe morally that executing anyone is wrong.

Anyone.

Ever.

[Glenn]

Originally Posted by apocalipstic

Did the USA actually vote for it?

Look at the things the US has done to many of the nations who voted against it. For 100's of years. Why should they respect our opinions?

We need to lead by example and make sure our allies are there for voting!

I thought I heard Hilary say that we with held our vote near the end. I just don't understand what the point is of a UN if everyone does'nt have to vote, or is too afraid to. Where was everyone else?

[Apocalipstic]

Originally Posted by popcorninthesofa

I thought I heard Hilary say that we with held our vote near the end. I just don't understand what the point is of a UN if everyone does'nt have to vote, or is too afraid to. Where was everyone else?

We could ask the same of our Congress or of each of us. Where was everyone when it came time to vote?

I need to read up on when we voted and if we held off till the end...why.

Like anything else this is political and for some it is easier to not have an opinion, lest they be seen as Queer or liberal or something equally shocking. For some, it was not an important vote. Some may have passive agressively been trying to send the US a message to leave them alone.

The only way the UN was ever going to work the way we think it is supposed to, was for the US and the rest of the Security Council follow the rules and pay the dues and we have not. I think it was doomed to ever be what I want it to be when the League of Nations was shot down by Congress for sheer political reasons all those years ago.


I have a question. Why is our problem just with Queers being executed?

[Julie]

Originally Posted by apocalipstic

I have a question. Why is our problem just with Queers being executed?

I am just quoting this part of your post, because it really put my stomach in knots.

I love the term Queer. While I identify as a Femme... I am also Queer.
Something about the way it is stated, makes me sad.

As I just explained on the phone to people I work with -- It is about PEOPLE. We should be concerned with Female Stoning and Female Circumcision, among the other atrocities going on in the world.

BUT THIS... Right now. There are PEOPLE/HUMAN BEINGS who are imprisoned in countries, such as Uganda - who have been on a "stay of execution." They no longer have protection. Tomorrow, they can be executed without the protection or investigation. This is HUGE.

I have contacts in many of these third world countries. I am concerned for them and those that I do not know. We are concerned, because OUR LGBTQ brothers and sisters will be executed.

[Apocalipstic]

Originally Posted by InfiniteFemme

I am just quoting this part of your post, because it really put my stomach in knots.

I love the term Queer. While I identify as a Femme... I am also Queer.
Something about the way it is stated, makes me sad.

As I just explained on the phone to people I work with -- It is about PEOPLE. We should be concerned with Female Stoning and Female Circumcision, among the other atrocities going on in the world.

BUT THIS... Right now. There are PEOPLE/HUMAN BEINGS who are imprisoned in countries, such as Uganda - who have been on a "stay of execution." They no longer have protection. Tomorrow, they can be executed without the protection or investigation. This is HUGE.

I have contacts in many of these third world countries. I am concerned for them and those that I do not know. We are concerned, because OUR LGBTQ brothers and sisters will be executed.

I was also using Queer as an umbrella term for Gay, Lesbian, Intersexed, Butch Femme, Trans, etc.

I am horrified that anyone is EVER executed.

I grew up in a country where people dissapeared all the time never to be heard from again. I think we should be just as angry about all of it, not just people like us. Gay people sat in prison and many were executed. Dead people were in the streets.

I think we are more horrified because its is people like us who are being executed, I think we should be horrified that anyone is executed.

Yes it is horrible to me that this vote went as it did, but even more horrible to me is that there is a list of groups it is ok to execute at all.

I asked that question as a Queer Femme Lesbian, sorry my use of Queer made your stomach feel upset. All of this makes mine pretty upset too.

[dreadgeek]

Originally Posted by apocalipstic

Did the USA actually vote for it?

Look at the things the US has done to many of the nations who voted against it. For 100's of years. Why should they respect our opinions?

We need to lead by example and make sure our allies are there for voting!

Actually, since the United States practices executions for criminals our delegation tends to abstain from votes regarding death penalty. (since typically these votes are in favor of executing people that the USA has no appetite for killing).

What do our actions have to do with this vote? Can you explain to me the causal chain that gets us from "In this year the United States did this action and so in 2010 the UN delegation from this nation voted in favor of executing queers"? I ask because I cannot get there. I do not see the path from, say, our overthrowing the government of Mosadech (sp) in Iran in the mid-50's to them executing queers. Let's say that we had spent the last 234 years safely ensconced in our borders--not intervening even in a case where American intervention was so obviously needed like, say, WW I and WW II. How do you think that the 79 nations that voted in favor of executing queers would have voted? Additionally, why do you think their votes would have been different?

[Jess]

My personal and political views on this are closely tied. It would make a stronger political and moral statement to the rest of the UN nations, if country's like the US would grant full equal human rights rather than issue any type of condemnation.

I agree with dreadgeek, in that I think the cultural beliefs and dogma of those nations are so deeply ingrained that with or without any Western presence in their country those notions of anti- homosexuality would still be intact.

Were we to step up to the plate, so to speak, and show that we not only don't agree with the right to execute based on sexual orientation, but that we further, view homosexuals as equal human beings with FULL rights, perhaps we could change their view without putting them on the defense.

Global politics are no different really than our personal politics. Just more people involved. The whole theory behind thinking globally and acting locally can be felt here.

What right does the US have to see these actions as barbaric ( which is how I see it, not from any statement made in the press), when we disallow the same group of citizens equal rights under and protected by the laws of our own country?