United Nations Restores Sexual Orientation To Resolution Condeming Extrajudicial, Summary and Arbitrary Executions ANS

This seemed to be a big deal in the mainstream media when they took out protection for homosexuals, but I didn't hear anything about it being put back in until I read this by chance.
Find it here:  http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/2010/12/22/28679#comments 
--Kim

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United Nations Restores Sexual Orientation To Resolution Condeming Extrajudicial, Summary and Arbitrary Executions

Jim Burroway

December 22nd, 2010

The United Nations General Assembly yesterday succeeded in restoring �sexual orientation� to a resolution condemning extrajudicial, summary and arbitrary executions. The category of sexual orientation had been removed last month as a result of an Arab and African proposal. Yesterday�s 93-55 vote (with 27 abstentions) approved an American proposal to reinsert �sexual orientation� back into the resolution. The resolution was then passed with 122 yes votes, none against and 59 abstentions.

The UN passes a resolution every two years condemning extrajudicial killings. The 2008 version included a reference to sexual orientation. Zimbabwe�s U.N. Ambassador Chitsaka Chipaziwa harshly condemned its re-insertion into the 2010 resolution:

We will not have it foisted on us,� he said. �We cannot accept this, especially if it entails accepting such practices as bestiality, pedophilia and those other practices many societies would find abhorrent in their value systems.

�In our view, what adult people do in their private capacity by mutual consent does not need agreement or rejection by governments, save where such practices are legally proscribed,� Chitsaka said.

Paul Canning, who has an extensiverundown of the vote, reports that one-third of African countries either supported the American proposal to reintroduce �sexual orientation� into the resolution or abstained from voting, representing a change from their votes last month removing the clause. He also notes that almost all of the Caribbean, including Jamaica, also changed their votes as well. Canning noted the Rwandan ambassador�s �yes� vote:

In the debate at the UN the most moving contribution was from the Rwandan delegate who said that a group does not need to be �legally defined� to be targeted for massacres and referenced his countries experience. �We can�t continue to hide our heads in the sand� he said.�These people have a right to life.�