posted on July 14, 2002 03:36:58 PM new
Since most of the bible-pounding right has seemed to confine its definition of morality to issues relating to anything involving sex, tolerance, equality, or secularism, I was doing a web search to see if I could find any fire and brimstone denouncements of corporate criminalty when I came across a link to the article I've reprinted below.
The article is revealing, I think, about the influence of the totalitarian religious right on the Bush administration or vice versa. This article brought to mind again the glee of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell immediately after the 9/11 attacks.
Islamic Bloc, Christian Right Team Up to Lobby UN
By Colum Lynch
Special to The Washington Post
Monday, June 17, 2002; Page A01
UNITED NATIONS -- Conservative U.S. Christian organizations have joined forces with Islamic governments to halt the expansion of sexual and political protections and rights for gays, women and children at United Nations conferences.
The new alliance, which coalesced during the past year, has received a major boost from the Bush administration, which appointed antiabortion activists to key positions on U.S. delegations to U.N. conferences on global economic and social policy.
But it has been largely galvanized by conservative Christians who have set aside their doctrinal differences, cemented ties with the Vatican and cultivated fresh links with a powerful bloc of more than 50 moderate and hard-line Islamic governments, including Sudan, Libya, Iraq and Iran.
"We look at them as allies, not necessarily as friends," said Austin Ruse, founder and president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, a New York-based organization that promotes conservative values at U.N. social conferences. "We have realized that without countries like Sudan, abortion would have been recognized as a universal human right in a U.N. document."
The alliance of conservative Islamic states and Christian organizations has placed the Bush administration in the awkward position of siding with some of its most reviled adversaries -- including Iraq and Iran -- in a cultural skirmish against its closest European allies, which broadly support expanding sexual and political rights.
U.S. and Iranian officials even huddled during coffee breaks at the U.N. summit on children in New York last month, according to U.N. diplomats.
But the partnership also has provided the administration an opportunity to demonstrate that it shares many social values with Islam at a time when the United States is being criticized in the Muslim world for its continued support of Israel and the nine-month-old war on terrorism. "We have tried to point out there are some areas of agreement between [us] and a lot of Islamic countries on these social issues," a U.S. official said.
"The main issue that brings us all together is defending the family values, the natural family," added Mokhtar Lamani, a Moroccan diplomat who represents the 53-nation Organization of Islamic Conferences at the United Nations. "The Republican administration is so clear in defending the family values."
Lamani said he was first approached by U.S. Christian non-governmental organizations, or NGOs, at a special session of the U.N. General Assembly on AIDS in New York in June 2001.
Liberal Western activists and governments, he said, had offended the religious and cultural sensitivities of Islamic countries by proposing that a final conference declaration include explicit references to the need to protect prostitutes, intravenous drug users and "men who have sex with men" from contracting AIDS.
"It was totally unacceptable for us," Lamani said. "The Vatican and so many NGOs came up to us saying this is exactly the same position we are defending."
The Islamic-Christian alliance claimed an important victory at the U.N. children's meeting last month.
The Bush administration led the coalition in blocking an effort by European and Latin American countries to include a reference in the final declaration to "reproductive health care services," a term the conservatives believed could be used to promote abortion.
The U.S. team included John Klink, a former adviser to the Vatican at previous U.N. conferences; Janice Crouse, a veteran antiabortion advocate at Concerned Women of America; and Paul J. Bonicelli of Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, Va., a Christian institution that requires its professors teach creationism.
The Christian groups and Islamic countries have been seeking to build on those gains at subsequent U.N. gatherings, pressing for greater restrictions on abortion at an annual meeting of the World Health Organization last month and later at a U.N. preparatory conference on sustainable development in Bali, Indonesia.
"The rest of the world saw a shift in the debate" at the children's summit, said Patrick Fagan of the Heritage Foundation, a Washington policy group. "It wasn't just pure defense. They are on the offensive here."
Some Western countries and liberal activists say they are alarmed by the influence of the Christian right at the United Nations, where more liberal women's rights organizations have held sway for the past decade.
"They are trying to undo some of the landmark agreements that were reached in the 1990s, particularly on women's rights and family planning," a U.N.-based European diplomat said. "The U.S. decision to come into the game on their side has completely changed the dynamics."
"This alliance shows the depths of perversity of the [U.S.] position," said Adrienne Germaine, president of the International Women's Health Coalition. "On the one hand we're presumably blaming these countries for unspeakable acts of terrorism, and at the same time we are allying ourselves with them in the oppression of women."
The World Policy Center, a Mormon group established in 1997 to promote family values through an alliance that includes conservative Christians, the Catholic Church and Islamic governments, is holding a conference next month at Brigham Young University School of Law. It will bring antiabortion advocates and legal critics of the United Nations together with more than 60 U.N. diplomats, including delegates from conservative Catholic and Islamic countries.
Ruse first outlined his strategy for maximizing the conservatives' leverage at the United Nations at a 1999 meeting in Geneva of the World Congress of Families, a gathering of advocates of conservative family values. It involves "lavish[ing] all our attention" on a coalition of 12 antiabortion countries that are willing to fight for their cause at U.N. sessions, he said. Religious leaders and politicians in the United States and in these select countries in the developing world should be persuaded "to encourage these governments to defend life and family at the United Nations."
He also boasted that his tactics were beginning to seize the initiative from advocates for the rights of children, women and gays. "Our team was in a tiny conference room leaning over the backs of diplomats, assisting with the drafting of the conference document," he said.
"We broke all the rules of U.N. lobbying, which forbids leafleting on the floor of a U.N. conference. We had our people fan out across the floor of the conference and we placed this letter in the hand of every delegate."
posted on July 14, 2002 03:53:47 PM new
Sudan? Where the Muslim majority in the north is persecuting the Christians of the south because of their religion? Where slavery is still practiced?
With allies like that, who needs an axis of evil?
8^0 You have the right to an informed opinion -Harlan Ellison
posted on July 14, 2002 04:26:15 PM new
Antiquary, I read that article when it first appeared in the Post and thought about reprinting it here. However, I've become so jaded by the "Religious Right" that little they do surprises me. They've become predictable in their bigoted stances.
posted on July 14, 2002 05:06:06 PM new
"Where slavery is still practiced?"
Slavery was never a problem for the Southern States of the Confederacy. They always could point quite truthfully to the acceptance of slavery in the Bible. Of course they might have also read some of the passages about how well a slave was supposed to be treated.
Sudan was added to the State Department's list of terrorism-exporting states in 1993 and has been under U.S. sanctions since 1997. Former President Clinton froze[i]
Sudanese government assets in the United[/i] States and barred most U.S.-Sudanese trade and most U.S. investments in Sudan. from the above link.
The RR have certainly shown the most egregious hypocrisy I've seen in years in obtaining this protection of the *rights of the unborn* by supporting slavery, torture and murder of their living coreligionists. There is no emoticon adequate for the disgust I feel at such actions.
Besides, I thought the Fundies were against the UN. What's up with that?
You have the right to an informed opinion -Harlan Ellison
posted on July 14, 2002 05:28:31 PM new
I don't think there is enough oil in the Sudan to interest the US in what happens there. If Powell was hoping to use his position to help the area I think he will be disappointed. I had thought before that he was principaled enough that I am surprised he is still in the administration.
posted on July 14, 2002 07:17:31 PM new
"You say you're supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists and this, that, and the other thing. Nonsense. I don't have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist. I can love the people who hold false opinions but I don't have to be nice to them."--Pat Robertson, The 700 Club, January 14, 1991
Pat Robertson, like John Ashcroft, is pentecostal and charismatic. It is significant to note what very large protestant demonination Robertson excludes from characterizing as "the spirit of the Antichrist." But I'm sure that none of the larger denominations named above sent lobbyists to the UN in an attempt to impose their religious belief upon the world.
posted on July 14, 2002 07:39:30 PM new
"Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America is now doing to the evangelical Christians. It's no different. It is the same thing. It is happening all over again. It is the Democratic Congress, the liberal-based media and the homosexuals who want to destroy the Christians. Wholesale abuse and discrimination and the worst bigotry directed toward any group in America today. More terrible than anything suffered by any minority in history."--Pat Robertson, 1993 interview with Molly Ivins
Today's fundamentalists are the most persecuted group in world history. No wonder Robertson so strongly condemns public education. I bet not a single history book used in any public school in the nation includes that fact.
posted on July 14, 2002 07:44:04 PM new
Oh yeah - just last week they were smashing the christians storefronts here and burning their homes. I wonder where they took them in those cattle cars? Wyoming? They have to wear a little patch on their clothing now - shows a holy roller in enbroidery.
Maybe our UN Delegates can persuade the rest of the world to help free them.
"The Constitution of the United States, for instance, is a marvelous document for self-government by the Christian people. But the minute you turn the document into the hands of non-Christian people and atheistic people they can use it to destroy the very foundation of our society. And that's what's been happening." -- Pat Robertson, The 700 Club, Dec. 30, 1981
Part of the problem ,then, is that only Christians can understand the Constitution--excluding the denominations previously noted above that are really the spirit of the anti-Christ.
posted on July 14, 2002 08:23:13 PM new
Strong words for someone who even shirked his National Guard service during Vietnam. You have the right to an informed opinion -Harlan Ellison
posted on July 14, 2002 08:26:26 PM new
I should have clarified that the statement was made by President George Bush, August 27, 1988. I've always had the impression that he was more tolerant than Shrub, however.
posted on July 14, 2002 08:34:29 PM new
BUSH QUOTE...
"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God."-- George Bush
That may be the craziest remark that he has ever made. Maybe he is really insane.
posted on July 14, 2002 08:37:58 PM new
Antiquary, if that's more tolerant, we are in for interesting times. You have the right to an informed opinion -Harlan Ellison
posted on July 14, 2002 09:14:42 PM new
I think that the majority of Americans have underestimated the extent of the power that the religious right has achieved. Their goal is pretty unambiguous.
"The mission of the Christian Coalition is simple," says Pat Robertson. It is "to mobilize Christians -- one precinct at a time, one community at a time -- until once again we are the head and not the tail, and at the top rather than the bottom of our political system." Robertson predicts that "the Christian Coalition will be the most powerful political force in America by the end of this decade." And, "We have enough votes to run this country...and when the people say, 'We've had enough,' we're going to take over!"--Pat Robertson
posted on July 14, 2002 10:12:43 PM new
Still think that I'm over the edge in saying that Bush is Satan's proxy on earth and the GOP are Satan's Hooligans?
posted on July 14, 2002 10:49:24 PM new
Well maybe tettering a little but not over the edge yet.
I still like the movie Dune the Bene Gesserit sisterhood always reminded me of Nuns and the Guild Always reminded me of priests but then they arent the religious right, what really ticks me is these tv hucksters milk a bunch of ignorant people with their off the wall nonsense, and then want to force it on me.
You know the look like a stepford wife they stare off into space and begin raving about your relationship with god.
Yet its the Lutherans and catholics running the food pantries not these tightwad hypocrites.
Maybe I'll Join them Listen up I saw God He came to me in a vision and said that I Need 15,000.00 out of new Jersey or everything ends.
Yeah Right, I'm all for their right to do what they want as long as everyone they do it to is willing.
posted on July 14, 2002 10:54:28 PM new
These people scare me a lot more than terrorists do.They have the ability to change ~ destroy ~ the American way of life faster than any terrorist group.
