Having consistently made a mess of things from its 1970ıs condemnation of Zionism as racism to its left-wing field day in Cairo last year, the UN is at it again. This Monday began the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, with delegations from over 170 nations including, sadly, the United States. The event is a monstrous injustice for several reasons.
First, the location is a grim irony, rather like holding a human-rights conference in Pol Potıs Cambodia. Communist China has a long history of oppression and atrocities against its own people. Its infamous one-child-per-family decree alone should disqualify it. In principle this law violates the principle that families, not the state, should decide how many children to have. In practice it has led to forced abortion (see, among others, World, Jan. 7, 1995, p. 20), the sex-selective abortions of millions of unborn girls (San Francisco Examiner, April 24, 1994, p. A7), and, in cases of botched abortions, state-enforced infanticide (Readerıs Digest, Sept. 1995, p.65).
Then there are the more general crimes against humanity, such as the Red Chinese takeover of North Korea, Maoıs Cultural Revolution, and the 1989 crackdown in Tiananmen Square. Burn the Chinese flag in China, and instead of an ACLU-funded lawsuit, you get a firing squad. In short, China is just another Communist dictatorship, enslaving or executing any citizens who dissent. Not the ideal place for a conference on womenıs rights.
Or is it? The second major problem is that our American delegation supports a radical-feminist agenda quite friendly to the idea of vast state powers and dead set against traditional American moral values. Here are some of the delegationıs views according to the Family Research Council.
First, they frown on the traditional husband-and-wife family. The UN platform document is hostile to all traditional roles of men and women, and in many cases men themselves. Platform paragraph 198, for instance, defines the marriage relationship as a power struggle, reflecting the feminist view that marriage is only one more trap from which women must liberate themselves.
Second is the gender-feminist notion that gender is merely a ³social construct,² that there are no innate psychological differences between men and women, no absolute definition of ³masculine² or ³feminine.² The definition of ³gender² itself will be debated at the conference, one possibility being ³the socially-constructed roles which society assigns to men and women.²
The goal of such a definition is to erase all practical societal distinctions between male and female: in families, government, jobs, the military (including the draft), and so on. This, in spite of (a) common sense, (b) nearly all of evolutionary biology, and (c) research proving that women are more nurturing, men more aggressive, etc. I hesitate even to argue with such nonsense; even to mention it seems absurd. Yet the radical American feminists are cheering it in Beijing.
Third, the usual ideology of ³safe sex,² condoms for all, and abortion on demand. Never mind the insult to Catholic and Muslim countries, or the well-documented failure rate of condoms, or the moral breakdown caused by preaching indulgence rather than restraint. A sidelight is that the platform document ³refuses to recognize parental authority regarding their childrenıs reproductive health² (Washington Watch , Aug. 24, 1995).
Fourth, complete support for gay rights. There is to be no distinction of any kind between heterosexuality and homosexuality, in law, religion, or culture. Gay marriage, adoption and ³parenting² rights, and state-enforced acceptance of homosexuality are naturally included. This is the long-standing gay-rights goal of ³sexual parity.²
There is much more hard-left philosophy driving the U.S. delegation, which includes die-hard radical feminist, Stalinist, and Viet Cong supporter Bella Abzug (see the Washington Times , Sept. 2, 1994, p. A1), along with Hillary Clinton need I say more? The danger is that other nations, especially developing nations, will see it as the official American ideology, backed by American power and prestige. Rather than risking the loss of foreign-aid dollars, they will go along with it, and the radicals will impose their will worldwide.
Of course, America has a right to attach strings to foreign aid, and we should promote certain values. But those above are decidedly the wrong ones, leading to a world in which men and women are at war, in which an all-powerful state is both mother and father to every child, in which God has no place. These notions are far outside mainstream America, and our delegates have no right to promote them as they will assuredly do. Unless Americans take a firm stand, the UN will continue actively to subvert the philosophy that created its greatest member, the USA.
John Keisling, a math Ph.D. candidate, believes we can have bikes AND bombs. His column appears Tuesdays.