United Nations, Religious Freedom, and Universal Healthcare

“The United States is founded on the principle that our rights do not come from government; they come from God. This immortal truth is proclaimed in our Declaration of Independence and enshrined in the First Amendment to our Constitution’s Bill of Rights. Our Founders understood that no right is more fundamental to a peaceful, prosperous, and virtuous society than the right to follow one’s religious convictions.”

With these words, President Trump began a remarkable speech delivered last Monday (September 23, 2019). He underscored that personal virtue, and not public law, is the foundation of all civilization. Unless citizens can be trusted to behave honorably without constant supervision and overbearing force, civil society is not possible. Moreover, the only force capable of creating such a society is the religious conviction that orients its citizens to worship the Creator of all things.

President Trump travelled to New York last week to deliver these remarks. It was the first time that any American president presided over a meeting on religious freedom at the United Nations.

This is a remarkable fact given that the U.N. Universal Declaration of Human Rights holds that, “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.”

How is it that many U.N. member nations still fine, harass, discriminate, imprison, torture and kill their own citizens who live out their faith by teaching their own children, evangelizing their friends and neighbors, and praying in public? Not only do many allow such atrocities within their borders, but countries like Azerbaijan, China, Cuba, Nicaragua, Pakistan and Venezuela sit in privileged seats on the U.N. Human Rights Council!

Vice President Pence, in his remarks, specifically rebuked the regime in Iran for its brutal persecution of Christians, Sunnis, Bahai’i, Yazidi’s and Jews. He called out the communist party in China for oppressing Christians, Uighurs and Muslims. In the western hemisphere, he condemned Daniel Ortego of Nicaragua for his war on the Roman Catholic Church, and Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela for using “hate laws” to prosecute clergy.

Religious persecution is not limited to communists and jihadists. Canada, Australia and England have also arrested and jailed Christian pastors by applying “hate laws” to proscribe the expression of foundational teachings about life, family and human nature. Even in America scattered states and municipalities have enacted ordinances designed to do the same.

Thankfully, the past year has seen several landmark rulings that have rolled back the religious discrimination inherent in such ordinances. Last summer the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the persecution of Jack Philips under a Lakewood, Colorado, ordinance similar to those passed in Laramie (2015) and Jackson (2018).

More recently the 8th Circuit Court ruled against a Minnesota law that required film makers to create art promoting a message against their religion. As recently as last Thursday, September 26, a federal judge rebuked the Attorney General of Michigan for trying to shut down a Roman Catholic adoption agency for placing children in the best possible family situations.

What the Arizona Supreme Court wrote in its judgement against the city of Phoenix was especially crisp and clear. “The rights of free speech and free exercise, so precious to this nation since its founding, are not limited to soft murmurings behind the doors of a person’s home or church, or private conversations with like–minded friends and family. These guarantees protect the right of every American to express their beliefs in public. This includes the right to create and sell words, paintings, and art that express a person’s sincere religious beliefs” (Brush & Nib Studio v. Phoenix).

Aside from state-sponsored persecution, there are also many places in the world where majority populations harass, unjustly prosecute and kill religious minorities with impunity. President Trump specifically called out the unchecked power of multinational corporations to persecute and silence people of faith.

“Too often, people in positions of power preach diversity while silencing, shunning, or censoring the faithful.  True tolerance means respecting the right of all people to express their deeply held religious beliefs,” Trump said, likely in reference to Facebook, Twitter and Google. He announced the formation of “a coalition of U.S. businesses for the protection of religious freedom” to address this.

One of the most fundamental of religious rights is the right of parents to raise their own children. While Trump did not address this issue, a joint initiative of the State Department and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) made this explicit.

HHS Sec. Alex Azar

Secretaries Pompeo and Azar jointly asserted that “to protect the unborn and defend the family as the foundational unit of society [is] vital to children thriving and leading healthy lives.” They decried attempts at the U.N. to “diminish the role of parents in the most sensitive and personal family-oriented issues.”

The same day that the president delivered his remarks, Secretary Azar of the HHS addressed the U.N. meeting on Universal Health Coverage. He stated, “the United States deplores that some countries politicized the negotiation over this declaration by including language that has been used to promote abortion as healthcare and promote sex education that diminishes the protective role of the family in improving health.”

In this speech he announced that 19 nations holding a combined population of over 1.3 billion were issuing a joint statement calling on the U.N. to stop undermining the family and the sovereignty of member nations. By the end of the week, two additional nations had signed the statement.

The statement reads, in part, “We do not support references to ambiguous terms and expressions, such as ‘sexual and reproductive health and rights’ …because they can undermine the critical role of the family and promote practices, like abortion.” It goes on to say, “we only support sex education that appreciates the protective role of the family in this education and does not condone harmful sexual risks for young people.”

For decades advocates of human life and the human family have watched with alarm as the U.N. undermined unalienable rights throughout the international community. Egregious violations of religious rights were tolerated while national sovereignty and parental rights were actively attacked.

Last Monday the United States led dozens of nations to take a stand against these encroachments. Word on the street is that many, many more international leaders are poised to join us. Only time will tell. But Monday, September 23, 2019, may go down in history as the day that reclaimed the United Nations as a force for religious freedom and family rights.