Mainstream Media Ignores Hillary’s Landmark U.N. Speech, Anti-Gay Groups Lose Their Shit Over It

Yesterday, President Obama gave international gay rights a serious boost when he issued a memorandum saying fair treatment of LGBT people worldwide is a priority of the administration.

Secretary Clinton did him one better, though, when she took to the microphone before the United Nations in Geneva and delivered a 30-minute speech (13-minute version above) highlighting her belief that human rights and gay rights are one and the same, and that we need to start providing aid to marginalized LGBT people across the world.

She acknowledged that America still has a way to go herself:

I speak about this subject knowing that my own country’s record on human rights for gay people is far from perfect. Until 2003, it was still a crime in parts of our country. Many LGBT Americans have endured violence and harassment in their own lives, and for some, including many young people, bullying and exclusion are daily experiences. So we, like all nations, have more work to do to protect human rights at home.

Seeing as this is the first time a United States politician has vocally promoted gay rights on an international level, in no uncertain terms, the mainstream was quick to pay attention, right?

Um, not quite.

ThinkProgress’ Igor Volsky noted that “while MSNBC devoted four separate segments to the administration’s announcement—with ample coverage from Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell— and Fox News even included the story in Bret Baier’s Special Report, CNN, ABC World News, and the CBS Evening News ignored it entirely.” He also notes that the NBC Nightly News “did cover the story at the top of the program.”

And, of course, right-wing wing nuts are completely freaking out over this. Click through for the reactions from anachronistic Christian groups, objectionable Republican presidential candidates, and “stony-faced” anti-gay diplomats.

NEXT: How did the Right respond?

Photo via kakissel

 

Christian Groups Respond to Clinton’s Human-Rights Address to the UN

Family Research Council Senior Douchebag fellow Peter Sprigg made the following comments:

It is startling that President Obama is prepared to throw the full weight and reputation of the United States behind the promotion overseas of the radical ideology of the sexual revolution. If he did the same on other issues, his own liberal allies would undoubtedly accuse him of cultural imperialism. Threats to withhold foreign aid from poor countries unless they conform their laws to the views of Western radicals are unconscionable.

The United Nations, like the United States, remains sharply divided on the issue of whether special rights should be granted on the basis of sexual conduct, sexual orientation or gender identity. No treaty or widely accepted international agreement has established homosexual conduct as a human right, yet the Obama administration’s actions seem guided by this fiction.

President Obama should increase efforts to defend human rights that are widely recognized, such as religious liberty, rather than appeasing his domestic allies by imposing an alien ideology on other countries.

Who says defending religious liberty globally doesn’t go right along with defining gay rights? And the sexual revolution is not a radical ideology, it’s a historical fact that happened 40 years ago. Perhaps the FRC should catch up to it.
Rick Perry

The out-of-touch Texas governor released a statement saying the following:

Just when you thought Barack Obama couldn’t get any more out of touch with America’s values, AP reports his administration wants to make foreign aid decisions based on gay rights.

This administration’s war on traditional American values must stop.

I have proposed a foreign aid budget that starts at zero. From that zero baseline, we will consider aid requests based solely on America’s national security interests. Promoting special rights for gays in foreign countries is not in America’s interests and not worth a dime of taxpayers’ money.

But there is a troubling trend here beyond the national security nonsense inherent in this silly idea. This is just the most recent example of an administration at war with people of faith in this country. Investing tax dollars promoting a lifestyle many Americas of faith find so deeply objectionable is wrong.

President Obama has again mistaken America’s tolerance for different lifestyles with an endorsement of those lifestyles. I will not make that mistake.

Oh, so my fellow Americans are merely not stating their active disregard for my vile homosexual lifestyle, I see. Thanks for letting me in on this, Rick. I’m going to have to have a word with them.Anti-Gay Diplomats

How did representatives from nations with less-than-stellar track records on gay rights respond?

The AP reports:

Clinton’s audience in Geneva included diplomats from Arab, African and other nations where homosexuality is criminalized or where brutality and discrimination against gay and transgender people is tolerated or encouraged. Many of the ambassadors in the audience responded with stony faces and rushed out of the room as soon as she finished speaking.

What’s so bad about these countries? Rick Perry says America doesn’t do more than just tolerate gays, so they’re not so far from us.

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