The First Official LGBT Report from the United Nations

The United Nations published its first report about discriminatory laws, practices, and acts of violence around the world directed against individuals based on their sexual orientation and gender identity.  While the report is only a summary of events, statistics, and proposed practices to reduce violence against LGBT and intersex people, it is a historic document. 

Only since 2006 has the UN identified LGBT and intersex people in studies, programs, and reports about HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, sex education, the safety of children, women's health, and hate crimes.  While reasons for the lack of LGBT and intersex recognition by the UN for so long is unknown, the current UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed his concern in a speech on Human Rights Day 2010, when he stated

"As men and women of conscience, we reject discrimination in general, and in particular discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity...Where there is a tension between cultural attitudes and universal human rights, rights must carry the day.  Together, we seek the repeal of laws that criminalize homosexuality, that permit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, that encourage violence."

People of the United States also struggle with a tension between cultural attitudes and universal human rights.  Recently Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a speech about LGBT rights being human rights.  At the same time, in the United States, there is still no federal protection specifically for LGBT people, and an LGBT asylum seeker abused or persecuted in his or her home country may suffer worse discrimination, abuse, and shame on American soil depending on where he or she settles.  Every state of our union has different laws in regard to the civil rights of LGBT people. 

To Clinton's credit, not once in her speech did she claim that the United States was a shining beacon of love and rainbows that would teach by example.  Every state in the union has its Matthew Shepards and Brandon Teenas, names upon names, souls upon souls, of people who could have made a difference in this world.