Hate crimes meeting puts emphasis on 'homophobia,' 'transphobia'

Hate crimes meeting puts emphasis on 'homophobia,' 'transphobia'
- OneNewsNow - 6/28/2008 4:25:00 AM

NEW YORK - Member States of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) were caught off guard in a meeting in Helsinki last week. They were expecting to discuss crimes motivated by racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism and religious intolerance. Instead the OSCE staff presented them with a draft of a soon-to-be-published document that includes repeated references to "homophobia" and "transphobia."

Sources inside the meeting told C-FAM's Friday Fax that while the public portion of the meetings stayed on the agreed topics of racism, xenophobia and religious intolerance, working group sessions revealed serious concerns on the part of participating States over the draft document's overwhelming focus on homosexual rights. Member States reminded the OSCE that it has no mandate to discuss "homophobia" or "transphobia" and that the OSCE ministerial council had previously rejected these issues as part of the organization's hate crimes mandate. (Note: Transphobia is a new term that the cultural left uses to refer to discrimination against those who have undergone sex change operations or are otherwise confused about their sex.)

Thirty-eight states participated in the two-day expert-level meeting, which was organized by the OSCE's Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights to facilitate hate crimes data collection between member countries and the OSCE. One of the primary objectives of the Helsinki meeting was to finalize the 2007 annual report, "Hate Crimes in the OSCE Region: Incidents and Responses." The organizers of the meeting did not allow for a substantial discussion of the 250-page draft, which contained numerous references to "homophobia" and "transphobia." Despite the lack of negotiations or consultations, at the close of the meeting the chairman declared that the report had been accepted through consensus.

Observers expressed concern that the OSCE is becoming more advocacy-driven in regards to homosexual rights and the organization has introduced terms like "transphobia" that have not been agreed to nor defined by Member States, rather than simply focusing on reporting and data collection.

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