PrintJanuary 6, 2011
What Obama Thinks of America
Sometimes the best way to find out what a person thinks about you is to find out what he tells others.
That's why the report on America's human rights record filed by the Obama administration with the U.N. is particularly interesting.
It's more accurate to say that this first-ever report to the U.N. Human Rights Council was from the Obama administration rather than from the United States. Its main theme is what President Obama has done in his short two years, rather than what our great country has accomplished as a beacon of human rights over 234 years.
What comes through is that President Obama's crew thinks America is congenitally discriminatory, and his administration is bravely soldiering into this morass against the unwashed masses to create an equal society.
As the report states, "[w]ork remains to meet our goal of ensuring equality before the law for all." Which American laws or institutions enshrine discrimination? Not mentioned. No matter -- when you're convinced that Americans are bigots, there is no need to provide proof.
The administration crows in the report about passing the incredibly divisive and unconstitutional health care act. It devotes a section to the bill, with glowing aspirations of how it will end the discrimination of a racist medical system. (Remember, these people see everything through the filter of race or identity politics -- even health care.)
Yet religious freedom (in which the U.S. excels in contrast to other countries) gets a few measly paragraphs with boilerplate generalities. Whereas the health care bill earned details like how many Asian-American men suffer from stomach cancer, the examples of a defense of religious freedom were a Native American primary school student's right to wear his hair in a braid and a Muslim girl's right to wear a hijab.
Maybe this administration is not keen on religious freedom. The issue is so old-school...yesterday's news...Christian. And it inconveniently conflicts with one of President Obama's priorities highlighted in the report, a priority that threatens religious freedom -- privileges for those who engage in homosexual, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender behavior.
Homosexual activists conducted a campaign of harassment, threats, vandalism, and attacks on employment against people who support traditional marriage -- with particular venom toward religious people. The vile assaults on Carrie Prejean for merely expressing her views pulled away the curtain that had been hiding how homosexual activists routinely treat decent people who dissent. It raised the question: Who is the aggressor, and who is victim?
The Obama administration would answer that question in a manner different from how most Americans would.
Their report states, "In each era of our history," there is "a group whose experience of discrimination illustrates the continuing debate of how we can build a more fair society. In this era, one such group is LGBT Americans."
Did you get that? "In each era of our history" -- that is, America is historically and inherently bigoted. Makes you wonder why they'd want to live here.
LGBT advocates (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) claim that sexual orientation is an inborn identity, like skin color or ethnicity, and they excoriate people who use the term "gay lifestyle" because it implies choices and actions. Yet the report's first boast of tackling discrimination against this group was the striking down of a law criminalizing sodomy. Apparently, particular actions do define homosexuality.
But most telling is the language to describe the assault on traditional marriage. That's where this report proves revealing.
Remember, since he ran for president, Obama has claimed that he does not support same-sex "marriage." Yet he opposes the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the clearest federal statute that protects marriage as the union of a man and a woman.
Obama's Justice Department sabotaged its defense of DOMA in a legal challenge, making such weak arguments that it guaranteed a loss. And he opposed California's Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment to define marriage as between a man and a woman.
So Obama opposes federal and state measures that define and enforce traditional marriage.
That's where the report to the U.N. really gets interesting. It states, "Debate continues over equal rights to marriage for LGBT Americans at the federal and state levels, and several states have reformed their laws to provide for same-sex marriages, civil unions, or domestic partnerships."
Amongst friends at the U.N., "same-sex marriage" is equal rights. Overturning marriage laws is "reform."
In the distorted view of the Obama administration, Americans' deep respect for the sanctity of marriage is categorized as "discrimination." In their view, clinging to traditional marriage -- the fundamental building block of society -- is evidence of America's breach of human rights. Deconstructing marriage to be "whatever feels good" is considered progress.
President Obama is, as he said in his inaugural address, remaking America. Too bad his image of America -- and what he wants to turn us into -- is so prejudiced.
Wendy Wright is president of Concerned Women for America, the nation's largest public policy women's organization.
