Of all the things I've written on this blog (so far), perhaps this will be the most inflammatory. But it needs to be said, and I don't hear anyone else saying it.
The Convention On The Elimination Of All Forms Of Discrimination Against Women
A close cousin to the ICERD is The Convention On The Elimination Of All Forms Of Discrimination Against Women (“CEDAW”), which the U.N. General Assembly adopted in 1979 and which entered into force in 1981. Even before it entered into force, President Carter rushed to sign it in 1980, again flaunting his fervor to entangle the United States in the “human rights” thicket. The Senate has never given its advice and consent, and while this renders the CEDAW’s provisions not directly binding, it nevertheless obligates the United States to uphold the CEDAW’s “object and purpose.”
This is most unfortunate because the CEDAW, like the ICERD before it, has the object and purpose of regulating private speech, thought, and conduct in a manner repellent to a free people. As admitted in CEDAW Article 5(a), the parties undertake “[t]o modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct of men and women, with a view to achieving the elimination of prejudices and customary and all other practices which are based on the idea of the inferiority or the superiority of either of the sexes or on stereotyped roles for men and women.” So we as private citizens are reduced to bacteria in the government’s Petri dish, to be manipulated and managed according to an ideological agenda. It should go without saying that this philosophy contradicts every noble impulse that went into the founding of America, a land where you could live your own life and adopt any attitude or disposition free from federal interference . . . even an unpopular attitude. Yet a United States President – holding an office once occupied by men who fought to make the American dream a reality – saw fit to join this patricide.
As if that weren’t offensive enough, the CEDAW proves even worse than the ICERD because it seeks to rescue only one of the sexes from discrimination, not both, thereby proceeding on its own sexist presumption that only women suffer from disfavorable “social and cultural patterns.” Article 5 makes a limp attempt to dispel this lopsidedness by declaring generally that men and women alike must not be victimized by prejudice, but when the rubber hits the road, the CEDAW speeds to the aid of women only (as its very name denotes). The CEDAW does this primarily by mandating women’s irreproachable involvement in areas of society such as voting; holding public office; formulation of government policy; participation in international affairs; higher education; the workplace; and finance. While women are thus invited to depart the gilded cage of domestic existence, no invitation is extended to the vast majority of men trapped in their own cage lacking any hint of gilt upon it. Miners, ditch diggers, military conscripts, non-biological fathers forced to pay child support, and untold legions of similar male toilers have no “human rights” treaty promising to whisk them away from their thankless sphere or to abolish the societal scorn that would surely accompany any such escape effort. The truth of the matter is that men and women throughout history have endured lives fraught with hardship and unfair societal expectations, and the advent of a treaty designating half the human race as uniquely aggrieved by this phenomenon warrants little more than denunciation.
Relishing the chance to push this warped ideology on a global scale, collections of appointed “experts” regularly issue pronouncements to further the CEDAW’s objectives. True to form, these pronouncements range from the insipid to the outlandish: governments must actively participate in and promote sexual education, contraception research, and health care – including that holy of holies, abortion (which is to be “free,” meaning forcibly paid by others). Governments must also snuff out Mothers’ Day because it “encourag[es] women’s traditional roles.” On the other hand, governments should by no means impose criminal penalties on prostitution. Bureaucratic bloviating of this sort is the last thing that America needs any more of, and we can only hope that the Senate retains enough of a spine to keep this convention filed in the trashcan.
The Convention On The Elimination Of All Forms Of Discrimination Against Women
A close cousin to the ICERD is The Convention On The Elimination Of All Forms Of Discrimination Against Women (“CEDAW”), which the U.N. General Assembly adopted in 1979 and which entered into force in 1981. Even before it entered into force, President Carter rushed to sign it in 1980, again flaunting his fervor to entangle the United States in the “human rights” thicket. The Senate has never given its advice and consent, and while this renders the CEDAW’s provisions not directly binding, it nevertheless obligates the United States to uphold the CEDAW’s “object and purpose.”
This is most unfortunate because the CEDAW, like the ICERD before it, has the object and purpose of regulating private speech, thought, and conduct in a manner repellent to a free people. As admitted in CEDAW Article 5(a), the parties undertake “[t]o modify the social and cultural patterns of conduct of men and women, with a view to achieving the elimination of prejudices and customary and all other practices which are based on the idea of the inferiority or the superiority of either of the sexes or on stereotyped roles for men and women.” So we as private citizens are reduced to bacteria in the government’s Petri dish, to be manipulated and managed according to an ideological agenda. It should go without saying that this philosophy contradicts every noble impulse that went into the founding of America, a land where you could live your own life and adopt any attitude or disposition free from federal interference . . . even an unpopular attitude. Yet a United States President – holding an office once occupied by men who fought to make the American dream a reality – saw fit to join this patricide.
As if that weren’t offensive enough, the CEDAW proves even worse than the ICERD because it seeks to rescue only one of the sexes from discrimination, not both, thereby proceeding on its own sexist presumption that only women suffer from disfavorable “social and cultural patterns.” Article 5 makes a limp attempt to dispel this lopsidedness by declaring generally that men and women alike must not be victimized by prejudice, but when the rubber hits the road, the CEDAW speeds to the aid of women only (as its very name denotes). The CEDAW does this primarily by mandating women’s irreproachable involvement in areas of society such as voting; holding public office; formulation of government policy; participation in international affairs; higher education; the workplace; and finance. While women are thus invited to depart the gilded cage of domestic existence, no invitation is extended to the vast majority of men trapped in their own cage lacking any hint of gilt upon it. Miners, ditch diggers, military conscripts, non-biological fathers forced to pay child support, and untold legions of similar male toilers have no “human rights” treaty promising to whisk them away from their thankless sphere or to abolish the societal scorn that would surely accompany any such escape effort. The truth of the matter is that men and women throughout history have endured lives fraught with hardship and unfair societal expectations, and the advent of a treaty designating half the human race as uniquely aggrieved by this phenomenon warrants little more than denunciation.
Relishing the chance to push this warped ideology on a global scale, collections of appointed “experts” regularly issue pronouncements to further the CEDAW’s objectives. True to form, these pronouncements range from the insipid to the outlandish: governments must actively participate in and promote sexual education, contraception research, and health care – including that holy of holies, abortion (which is to be “free,” meaning forcibly paid by others). Governments must also snuff out Mothers’ Day because it “encourag[es] women’s traditional roles.” On the other hand, governments should by no means impose criminal penalties on prostitution. Bureaucratic bloviating of this sort is the last thing that America needs any more of, and we can only hope that the Senate retains enough of a spine to keep this convention filed in the trashcan.
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