The UN takes to social media to say men can be lesbians

Among the world’s ongoing grave humanitarian crises and an increase in geopolitical tensions, the United Nations has taken to social media to tell us that men can be lesbians.

In celebration of “lesbian visibility”, the UN Human Rights Office posted on X that “trans lesbians are lesbians” along with several graphics showcasing lesbian women and “transgender lesbians” being affectionate towards one another. Hundreds of X users, many of them pro-lesbian, flooded the comments section criticizing the UN for denying biological reality and altering the term “lesbian” to include males.

Less than a month ago, the same UN held a “Summit of the Future”, hoping to reestablish its reputation as a relevant and trustworthy institution.

It should be noted that the UN Human Rights Office reflects the values and vision of the UN bureaucracy, and not necessarily of UN member states. Not all UN bureaucrats welcome those radical views, but many of them, including the Secretary-General and those who run human rights programs, certainly do.

The Office portrays itself as working to “promote and protect human rights that are guaranteed under international law and stipulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR),” yet no UN treaty recognizes the notion of “sexual orientation and gender identity”, let alone sex-change and transgender rights. Whenever references to sexual orientation and gender identity come up in negotiations, they create controversy and division among countries.

Brett Schaefer, Senior Research Fellow at Heritage Foundation, argues the UDHR is “under assault…[by] so-called UN human rights defenders who seek to expand the number of human rights and distort its interpretations in ways never envisioned by those who drafted the UDHR.”

In her 2002 book A World Made New, Mary Ann Glendon recounts that at the drafting of the Declaration in 1947, the atmosphere was “embroiled in philosophical debates.” At the time, UNESCO had established a philosophers’ committee that gathered reflections from “Chinese, Islamic, Hindu, and customary law perspectives, as well as from American, European, and socialist point of view” to determine different countries’ understanding of human rights and help advance a Declaration that drew on ideals common to all.

To everyone’s surprise, they succeed. Regrettably, such intellectual undertakings and respect for other cultures are distant memories at the UN.

The UN Secretariat and its agencies have adopted a progressive globalist philosophy that is far from universal and yet continues to drive most of its policies and programs.

In his recent address to the UN, President Javier Milei of Argentina said the UN is “departing from its original mandate of ensuring world peace towards a ‘Leviathan’ system deciding how people should live their lives.”

That no binding UN treaty includes language on sexual orientation and gender identity is proof that, at least on human sexuality, such a vision is far from being universal. UN agencies and affluent Western countries are working hard to integrate such verbiage everywhere they can, including in UN resolutions. Nevertheless, many member states and permanent observers, including Russia, Egypt, the Holy See, Belarus, Nigeria, and the Philippines, consistently oppose it.

Using demeaning rhetoric such as “pushback on women’s rights” and “anti-rights groups,” to refer to Member States and civil society organizations that hold traditional views on family structures and human sexuality has become a norm at the UN. Despite such conservative and traditional beliefs being consistent with a reasonable reading of the UDHR, the insults go so far as linking them with the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, insinuating that their views are but a softer approach of the same anti-women, anti-progress ideology.

Delegates who stand up for a traditional family and oppose the progressive gender ideology are looked down upon by their diplomat counterparts as backward, narrow-minded, and unsophisticated. Some of them joined the Group of the Friends of the Family to unite around their common worldview, despite facing a well-coordinated and well-resourced opposition that includes the richest countries in the world.

On the very rare occasions that conservative voices are given a platform at official UN meetings to discuss social policy, they are grilled by powerful countries and their legitimacy as UN officials are seriously questioned.

Reem Alsalem, for example, UN Special Rapporteur on violence against women and girls, published a report saying that men should not compete in women’s sports. When she presented her report at the UN, the US diplomat accused her of being transphobic and contributing to harm towards transgender people. Other countries, including the United Kingdom, Canada, the Netherlands, and France, baffled at Alsalem’s recommendations, criticized her on similar grounds.

The UN is increasingly reminiscent of a high school cafeteria where the cool kids dictate and enforce their ways through bullying and intimidation tactics. It may be worth reflecting upon Glendon’s account of Franklin Roosevelt’s assurance in 1943 that this new project that was to become the UN would indeed have “no interest…in Allied domination over other nations: ‘The doctrine that the strong shall dominate the weak is the doctrine of our enemies–we reject it.’”