NationStates Jolt Archive

I am totally for equality for race, religion, culture and gender. However a current human rights bill has been badly written and my concern is that this could be exploited to discriminate against certain groups.

So I have offered a valid replacement called the Racial and Gender Equality bill. This sorts out the problems of the Rights for Minorities and Women resolution. However for my bill to go through, the original resolution must be repealed. So I am asking all delegates to go to the proposal section and support BOTH of these proposals. What these entail are underneath:



Repeal of Rights for Minorities and Women
Whilst I agree that all people are equal, parts of this resolution are poorly written and need clarification. This could be used to limit freedom of speech and criminalise people for holding strong beliefs. Its wording is biased towards a postmodern view of the world and therefore intolerant of metanarratives.

Article III in particular is absurd and discriminates against people that believe in absolute truth. Of course some beliefs are more right and better than others. Democracy for example is superior to fascism and people who deny the holocaust are more wrong than believe who do accept the holocaust.

Article I is right when it says no race is better than another. However it can be argued that some cultures are better than others. A peaceful democracy is believed by many to be better than a warlike tribe of cannibals who perform human sacrifice. Criticism of a culture is valid as long as that criticism can be supported with evidence.

This resolution limits the human rights of everyone except postmodernists. Therefore I propose its repeal and I will offer a replacement resolution.

DELEGATES and VOTERS please only accept this proposal if you also accept my Rights for Racial and Gender Equality proposal.

Rights for Racial and Gender Equality

As a replacement for the Rights of Women and Minorities resolution; the Racial and Gender Equality bill maintains that:

All ethnic groups, both genders and all sexualities are to be recognised as equal in worth and equal in law. (The only exceptions as far as employment law is concerned is when legal equality threatens to undermine the job being offered. For example a black actor cannot sue a film company on the grounds of racial discrimination when he is turned down for the part of Hitler in a play. Another example is that the Catholic church can refuse employment of women priests on religious grounds. A feminist church can also refuse to appoint a male priest based on religious grounds.)

All cultures which do not upset serious moral and legal laws and codes will be respected and protected by law. However this does not mean people cannot criticise or dislike another culture.

All beliefs and religions which do not upset serious moral and legal laws and codes will be respected and treated equally by the law. However this does not mean that people cannot criticise or dislike other people’s religions or belief systems.

People have the right to believe and make absolutist claims. They can claim that they are correct and everyone else is wrong, so long as they show respect to those they deem have got it wrong. People can also hold postmodern views such as all religions are equally true.

People can express love for people of the same-sex as they can to express love for people of the opposite sex.

All harassment on any grounds will not be tolerated by this resolution.

DELEGATES and VOTERS please only accept this after accepting my Repeal of the Rights for Women and Minorities proposal. This is designed as a replacement.

http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=9014642&postcount=46

We've already dealt with this:

"Here it is again, the ignorance of what the resolution actually says and does, and how other resolutions work with it. What the resolution does is prohibits you, i.e. you the state, from picking and choosing what beliefs are "better" than others. It gives equal value, or lack thereof, to my statements about the ridiculousness of religion, as it does to your silly statements of its values. It in no way prohibits people from expressing their beliefs - it makes sure you cannot use your government's silly notions of "better" or "worse" belief to suppress them! If it did what you claim, it would have been deleted by the UN gnomes for violating the resolutions that deal with freedom of expression.

You seem to not understand this resolution and this matter at all."

http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=9014711&postcount=48

The repeal is unnecessary as it is based "on a fundamental failure to understand what the resolution says and does, and how it still must comply with other resolutions, especially the ones dealing with freedom of expression and speech."

Your replacement proposal is worse in the areas you claim that the original resolution is bad in, especially as it gives governments the possibility to suppress statements which "upset serious moral and legal laws and codes," which we see as a clear gutting, if not a total violation of, the resolutions that grant freedom of expression and speech to the citizens of the nations of the UN. In trying to rectify a situation which you have thoroughly failed to understand, you are ironically making it even worse than you have imagined that it was from the beginning.

A complete waste of the UN's time.

http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=9014642&postcount=46

We've already dealt with this:

"Here it is again, the ignorance of what the resolution actually says and does, and how other resolutions work with it. What the resolution does is prohibits you, i.e. you the state, from picking and choosing what beliefs are "better" than others. It gives equal value, or lack thereof, to my statements about the ridiculousness of religion, as it does to your silly statements of its values. It in no way prohibits people from expressing their beliefs - it makes sure you cannot use your government's silly notions of "better" or "worse" belief to suppress them! If it did what you claim, it would have been deleted by the UN gnomes for violating the resolutions that deal with freedom of expression.

You seem to not understand this resolution and this matter at all."

http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=9014711&postcount=48

The repeal is unnecessary as it is based "on a fundamental failure to understand what the resolution says and does, and how it still must comply with other resolutions, especially the ones dealing with freedom of expression and speech."

Your replacement proposal is worse in the areas you claim that the original resolution is bad in, especially as it gives governments the possibility to suppress statements which "upset serious moral and legal laws and codes," which we see as a clear gutting, if not a total violation of, the resolutions that grant freedom of expression and speech to the citizens of the nations of the UN. In trying to rectify a situation which you have thoroughly failed to understand, you are ironically making it even worse than you have imagined that it was from the beginning.

A complete waste of the UN's time. Can I ask if Article 3 applys to the UN nations attitude to beleif, or to the UN citizen. For we can accept that nations must see no religion or beleif as better than another. But to force that veiw onto citizens would be wrong.
And does UN law against rape then automatically reject rape as a valid cultural activity?


Sorry if we have misunderstood each other.

Can I ask if Article 3 applys to the UN nations attitude to beleif, or to the UN citizen. For we can accept that nations must see no religion or beleif as better than another. But to force that veiw onto citizens would be wrong.

The UN cannot force any view on your citizens. The UN, with this resolution, restricts what your government can do, not what your citizens think and say. Look at the resolutions that mention freedom of speech, opinion and expression.

And does UN law against rape then automatically reject rape as a valid cultural activity?

Yup. Look at the anti-paedophilia resolution, also. Culture is not an excuse for committing such acts.

Sorry if we have misunderstood each other.

We have been pointing this out to you for quite a while now. We're glad it's starting to sink in.