As it does every few years, a committee of the United Nations General Assembly has been fashioning a resolution calling for states to prosecute the extra-judicial killings of people because of their race, nationality, ethnicity, religion, language or other identifying characteristics. In past years, sexual orientation has been part of this list. But thanks to an amendment supported by a group of African and Muslim nations -- which passed by a vote of 79-70 -- the reference to sexual orientation has been struck from this year's resolution. The effective message is that killing someone because they're gay isn't that bad.
The breakdown of the 79-70 UN vote (available at www.iglhrc.org)follows an easily detectable pattern: The list of the 70 pro-gay votes is more or less a who's-who of the world's enlightened, civilized nations -- including, for instance, Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, France, India, Israel, Mexico, South Korea and the United States. Not all of these nations are rich (e. g. Dominican Republic), but almost all of them stand, aspirationally at least, for what we would broadly call Western values (the major exception being Venezuela). Tellingly, not a single one of them is majority-Muslim. And not a single one of them is African.
The list of the 79 anti-gay nations, on the other hand, is very different. There are two or three Caribbean outliers in this collection. But otherwise, these countries all are either (a) communist or post-communist autocracies (China, Cuba, Russia, North Korea, Vietnam), (b) Muslim police states (Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc.) and (c) the generally impoverished nations of Africa. ...
Third, they show up the fantastic ignorance and hypocrisy of radicalized gay-rights groups as Queers Against Israeli Apartheid -- which direct their hate at pro-gay Israel while ignoring the dozens of Muslim countries where gay bashing is common and, as these nations now effectively have informed us, officially tolerated. By the same token, Canadian labour groups such as the Canadian Union of Postal Workers might tell us why they are telling their members that "Cuba needs our support" (that's an actual quote from a CUPW "international solidarity bulletin") now that the Castro brothers have voted down a resolution against gay bashing.
Read more: The United Nations of homophobia