I went to your links regarding the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), a group about which I have been heretofore ignorant.
The ADF filed briefs in the European Court of Human Rights advocating that forced sterilization laws for transgender persons remain on the books.
“[B]ack on July 1, 2015, ADF International filed an intervention (similar to an amicus brief in U.S. courts) in the ECtHR arguing that the court should not decide in favor of the petitioners. Instead, ADF International attorneys Roger Kiska and Robert Clarke argued, much like their colleagues in the context of the U.S., that anti-discrimination protections and rights to privacy outlined in the ECHR do not extend to the LGBT community and, in this case specifically, transgender Europeans.”
This strikes me as odious and abhorrent. Hateful, even.
In Argentina, the ADF trumpted its role in defeating (by a narrow margin) the decriminalization of abortion in that country. Less than a year later, we are treated to this spectacle:
Doctors performed a caesarean section on an 11-year-old in Argentina on Tuesday, after Argentine authorities refused to grant the girl access to an abortion when she became pregnant with her rapist’s child. The news led to heartbreak and outrage among members of the country’s reproductive rights community, many of whom had joined the girl and her mother in repeated requests for access to an abortion. Born at 23 weeks, the baby is unlikely to survive.
Thanks to the ADF, abortion remains unsafe, unlegal, and unregulated. Amnesty International reports that complications from unsafe abortions are the leading cause of maternal death in Argentina. The Guardian reports that cases like that of the 11-year old girl above is neither rare nor unusual, but rather that thousands of girls are prevented from having abortions after they are raped in Argentina.
In that story:
The World Health Organization has found that complications in pregnancy and childbirth are the biggest killers of 15- to 19-year-old girls. While no official figures are collected for girls aged under 15, the WHO said mothers aged 10 to 19 face higher risks of eclampsia, puerperal endometritis and systemic infections than women aged 20 to 24.
Likewise, the ADF pointed out their success at the re-criminalization of homosexuality in India. That’s right, they succeeded in rolling the clock backward in the Subcontinent!
In December 2011, India’s Supreme Court voted to restore the country’s colonial-era law banning “carnal intercourse against the order of nature.” The ruling reversed a 2009 decision by the Delhi High Court, which found the law unconstitutional. Under India’s criminalization statute, gay sex is punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
In an interview with OneNewsNow, Alliance Defending Freedom Global executive director Benjamin Bull applauded the Supreme Court’s decision for not “giv[ing] in to a vocal minority of homosexual advocates”:
“When given the same choice the Supreme Court of the United States had in Lawrence vs. Texas, the Indian Court did the right thing,” says Bull, which was choose to “protect society at large rather than give in to a vocal minority of homosexual advocates. … America needs to take note that a country of 1.2 billion people has rejected the road towards same-sex marriage, and understood that these kinds of bad decisions in the long run will harm society.”
Fortunately, the Indian courts revisited the matter again in 2018, and rescinded the original decision.
But one doesn’t need to look as far as India, the ADF also made an amicus appearance in Lawrence v. Texas, the landmark Supreme Court case that invalidated sodomy laws, and by extension, private consensual homosexuality in the United States. The ADF supported sodomy laws.
I’d say that criminalizing whole classes of people, criminalizing abortion, and forcing people to undergo invasive, traumatic surgical procedures in the name of “religious liberty” (little girls and trans people alike) is hateful. And deserves oppobrium.
The power of the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center is that their mission is to expose groups like the ADF. Groups like the ADF would much prefer it if they could maintain the veil of respectability, and allow people to “both sides” human rights issues.
The mission statement of the SPLC is:
The SPLC is dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of our society. Using litigation, education, and other forms of advocacy, the SPLC works toward the day when the ideals of equal justice and equal opportunity will be a reality.
What I learned from your article is that they are doing a fine job. Thank you!
