Urgent
Action Item! Click here to send an instant
email to your Senators, asking them to vote against CEDAW!
The Moved UN-mover
The United States is an obstacle to
leftist U.N. initiatives.
Let's keep it that way.
The United States is rightly gaining
a reputation as the greatest obstacle to radically leftist
United Nations' initiatives. From the Kyoto protocol to
the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child (CFR), American
resistance is an enormous hindrance to these measures and
reduces their credibility. In this way, the United States
honors its position as world superpower.
Although this reputation has been
reaffirmed by the repeated failure of the Senate to ratify
the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination
Against Women (CEDAW), recent events have brought it once
again to the forefront.
Like the resolutions cited above,
it promotes a radically leftist agenda and must be stopped.
Attack against National Sovereignty
Adopted by the U.N. General Assembly
in December of 1979, then-President Jimmy Carter signed
it in 1980. Although the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
passed it in 1994, it has never been ratified by a full
Senate vote.
This could change. The State Department
has just changed its classification to a "Category
3" treaty making it low priority, but acceptable and
ready for ratification. Were this to occur, as a treaty,
it would become "the supreme law of the land,"1
according to the U.S. Constitution.
Worse yet, Part V of the treaty2
stipulates the formation of a 23-member committee to muster
compliance. These 23 members are elected from a pool of
nominees. Each country that ratifies the treaty has the
right to one nominee. Thus ratifying CEDAW would place America's
supreme law in the hands of 23 unknown people, most likely
foreigners.
The treaty's vague definitions and
provisions leave a lot of room for this committee's interpretation.
For example, in Part I, Article I, discrimination
is defined as:
This definition is so broad that
it could be interpreted even to outlaw the Church's position
against women priests.
Attack Against the Family
This same CEDAW committee has repeatedly
attacked the traditional conception of the family. It has
often discouraged full-time motherhood and in Belarus it
went so far as to discourage the celebration of Mother's
Day, which it decried for "encouraging women's traditional
roles."
In China, it expressed concern that
prostitution is still illegal, and disapproved of Germany
for not extending "the protection of labor and social
law" to prostitutes.4
In Ireland, the committee complained
that the "influence of the Church is still strongly
felt" since abortion remains illegal there.5
Italy also fell under attack because in many places Catholic
influence remains deep-rooted, making abortion difficult
to procure. Accordingly, Catholic hospitals should be forced
to perform abortions, regardless of the moral objections
of the Church or medical personnel.6
The CEDAW committee also promotes
homosexuality. In Kyrgyzstan, it ordered that, "lesbianism
be reconceptualized as a sexual orientation and that penalties
for its practice be abolished."7
Attack Against Children
Even in raising children, CEDAW wants
a say. Slovenia was criticized because only 30 percent of
the nation's children under three years of age were in daycare
and the German government was urged to "improve the
availability of care-places for school-aged children to
facilitate women's reentry into the labor market."8
More pernicious yet, CEDAW states
clearly, in Article 10c, its intention to reeducate the
world's youth to destroy what it calls the "stereotyped
concept of the roles of men and women."9
This has led the CEDAW committee to promote mandated sex
education, hinder single-gender schools and, in Romania,
call for the revision of its teaching materials, textbooks
and school curricula even at the primary level.10
An Initiative that Must Be
Stopped
After years of pigeonholing, this
initiative is an issue once again. At any moment, Senate
Majority Leader Thomas Daschle (D-S. Dak.) could call it
to a full Senate vote. Some fear he will do so before the
congressional elections this November.
Mindful that this may be their last
chance, liberals in the Senate are pushing it ahead full
steam. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) finds it "insulting
that such a simple, straightforward bill of rights for women
would languish in the greatest democracy in the world."
As patriotic Americans, now is the
time to act. One hundred sixty-seven nations have already
signed the treaty, American endorsement is the only remaining
impediment.
Take Action Now
We must take a stand. We must reaffirm
our national sovereignty, proclaim the traditional and only
true concept of the family and protect our nation's children
from liberal indoctrination.
More importantly, as a nation, rejecting
CEDAW will confirm our role as the world's greatest obstacle
to leftist U.N. initiatives, honor our role as world superpower
and grant God's blessing on our nation.
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