Freedom of Conscience and New “LGBT Rights” in International Human Rights Law
by Travis Weber and L Lin, Public Discourse:
“LGBT rights” are being elevated above conscience rights when the two come into conflict—but this trend is to the detriment of human rights, which can stand the test of time only when they are grounded in transcendent, fixed authority.
In the realm of international human rights law, major conflicts are developing today between freedom of conscience and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) policies. In these conflicts, much more is at stake than the rights of religious people. Everyone who cares about human rights for all—LGBT or not—should be concerned about the resolution of these conflicts, for the continued viability of the entire human rights framework hinges on their outcome.
Conscience occupies a place of paramount importance in international human rights law for at least two reasons. First, our endowment with conscience and reason is the foundation of the human rights system. Second, conscience has also been the engine of human rights activism—from the abolition of slavery to the condemnation of genocide. Because the architects of the modern international human rights system had a high view of conscience, both as evidence of human dignity and as a faculty for discerning moral truth, they identified it as a “core human right.”
Therefore, they created the strongest level of legal protection for it.
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