US legislators press Rice on UN vote against gays

By Irwin Arieff

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The Bush administration’s
support for Iran’s proposal to bar two gay rights groups from a
voice at the United Nations sparked a demand from U.S.
legislators on Tuesday that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
repudiate the action.

The January 23 vote denying “consultative status” at the
world body to the Belgium-based International Gay and Lesbian
Association and the Danish National Association for Gays and
Lesbians was a “drastic reversal” of Washington’s previous
stand on the issue, the U.S. House of Representatives members
wrote.

Nearly 3,000 nongovernmental organizations have such
status, which enables them to distribute documents and speak at
meetings of some U.N. bodies and conferences.

In voting for Iran’s proposal, “the United States joined
some of the world’s most oppressive regimes, among them China,
Cuba, Sudan and Zimbabwe” and demonstrated “a reprehensible
inconsistency” in the protection of rights based on sexual
orientation, the lawmakers said.

Among the 44 Democrats and one independent signing the
letter were Democrats Eliot Engel of New York, Steny Hoyer of
Maryland, Tom Lantos of California, Rahm Emanuel of Illinois
and Dennis Kucinich of Ohio.

They called on Rice to publicly repudiate the action and
support pending applications by three other gay rights groups.

The vote occurred in the U.N. Economic and Social Council’s
Committee on Nongovernmental Organizations.

U.S. officials said the United States had opposed the
Belgian group in January due to its previous ties to the North
American Man/Boy Love Association, which condones pedophilia.

But the United States had voted in 2002 to approve U.N.
ties to the group. At that time, a U.S. diplomat told the
committee Washington was convinced it no longer condoned
pedophilia and praised it for its life-saving activities in the
struggle against AIDS.

Despite U.S. support, the group failed to win enough votes
to win consultative status in 2002, and the January 2006 vote
had been its first chance since then to try again.

On January 23, the United States first abstained on a
motion to deny a hearing to the two groups. That motion
carried.

Washington then voted in favor of Iran’s proposal to deny
their applications, which carried 10-5 with three abstentions.

Following the vote, German envoy Martin Thuemmel said the
committee decision “will haunt us for a long time” because it
sent a message that it was acceptable to discriminate on the
basis of an individual’s sexual orientation.