"US stands Proudly For The Rights Of The LGBT community; National Security Advisor, Susan Rice
National Security Advisor
Susan Rice (Photo public domain)
National
Security Adviser Susan Rice on Wednesday stressed support of LGBT
"rights" remains an essential part of American foreign policy.
“The United States remains firmly committed to promoting freedom,
opportunity and prosperity everywhere,” she said during a speech at the
Newseum in downtown Washington during Human Rights First’s annual Human
Rights Summit. “
We stand "proudly" for the rights of women,
the LGBT
community and minorities.”
Rice noted President Obama spoke in support of LGBT rights
during a June press conference in the Senegalese capital
with the African country’s president the day after the U.S. Supreme
Court ruled a portion of the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional
and struck down California’s Proposition 8. Senegal is among the more
than 70 countries in which homosexuality remains criminalized.
BH India recently joined them
The former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations further highlighted
Obama’s meeting
with Russian LGBT Network Chair Igor Kochetkov, Olga Lenkova of Coming
Out and seven other Russian human rights advocates during the G-20
summit that took place in St. Petersburg, Russia, in September.
Rice noted the U.S. “often can cooperate with Russia” on arms control
and other “vital interests,” but she was quick to criticize the
Kremlin’s human rights record.
“As we meet these mutual challenges, "we" don’t remain silent about the
Russian government’s systematic efforts to curtail the actions of
Russian civil society, to stigmatize the LGBT "community",” Rice said. “"We"
deplore selective justice and the prosecution of those who protest the
corruption and cronyism that is sapping Russia’s economic future and
limiting its potential to play its full role on the world stage.”
Rice also pointed out in her speech the
U.S. has backed pro-LGBT
resolutions on the U.N. Human Rights Council and in the Organization of
American States and the Pan-American Health Organization.
“No one should face discrimination because of who they are or whom
they love,” she said. “We’re working to lead internationally as we have
domestically on LGBT issues.”
Rice noted the Obama administration supports “full equality” for LGBT
Americans that includes the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” She also
cited slain San Francisco City Supervisor Harvey Milk and the
late-former New York Congresswoman Bella Abzug
, who introduced the first
federal gay rights bill in 1975
(who had Malkiel, and Aaron Kotler's aunt endorsement when she ran for mayor 2 years later), as among the “champions who fought to
bring us closer to ideals” outlined in the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights that members of the U.N. General Assembly approved 65 years
ago this month.
“Continuing their work at home and expanding it around the globe is
our great commission as inheritors of their legacy,” Rice said.
She also met with Kaspars Zalitis of the Latvian LGBT advocacy group
Mozaika, Jovanka Todorovic of the Labris Lesbian Human Rights
Organization in Serbia and other human rights advocates after her
speech.
Rice served as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 2009
until Obama tapped her to succeed then-National Security Advisor Tom
Donilon in June after he resigned. She backed a resolution in support of
LGBT rights the U.N. Human Rights Council adopted in 2011.
She withdrew her name as a potential successor to then-Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton late last year amid controversy over the Sept.
2012 attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya, that left
Ambassador Chris Stevens and three others dead.
(
Washington Blade) highlights our additions
In a major policy address in Washington, National Security Adviser Susan
Rice said the promotion of human rights around the world is central to
U.S. foreign policy
“The United States remains firmly committed to promoting freedom,
opportunity and prosperity everywhere. We stand "proudly" for the rights
of women, the LGBT community and minorities,” Ms. Rice said. “We defend
the freedom of all people to worship as they choose, and we champion
open government and civil society, freedom of assembly and a free press.
We support these rights and freedoms with a wide range of tools because
history shows that nations that respect the rights of all their
citizens are more just, more prosperous and more secure.”
(Voice Of America) (A Official US Government News service) from Wikipedia
- Voice of America (VOA) is the official external broadcast institution of the United States federal government.
Notice she says worship not religion, what she means by worship is avodah similar to the mishna in Pirkay Avos
הוא היה אומר, על שלושה דברים העולם עומד--על התורה,
ועל העבודה, ועל גמילות החסדים
In short a country can have full freedom of worship even if it bans that milah, shechita, forces people to work on Shabbos etc.
Listen to the tax funded pro LGBT propaganda
Goverment Propaganda machine at work to promote the LGBT (I changed the title)
By Elizabeth Chuck, Staff Writer, NBC News
News
consumers in the U.S. can now hear and watch reports from one of the
largest broadcasting groups in the world —
after decades of their
taxpayer dollars funding them.
The change is due to a law, which
went into effect on July 2, that authorizes an independent network of
U.S. government-supported broadcasters called the Broadcasting Board of
Governors (BBG) to transmit their programs — which include
Voice of
America provider of part of the pro LGBT editorial, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Middle East Broadcasting
Networks, Radio Free Asia, and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting — to U.S.
households.
BBG's mission, according to
its website,
is to "inform, engage and connect people around the world in support of
freedom and democracy." Its budget for the 2012 fiscal year, fully
funded by taxpayers, was $752.7 million, according to a spokeswoman.
But since 1948, BBG had only been allowed to disseminate its material
to foreign listeners — this due to a law called the Smith-Mundt
Act passed three years after World War II.
The purpose of the
Smith-Mundt Act — also called the U.S. Information and Education
Exchange Act of 1948 — was to "promote a better understanding of the
United States in other countries, and to increase a mutual understanding
between the people of the United States and the people of other
countries."
The law was first challenged in 1972 when J. William
Fulbright, D-Ark., declared the U.S. was funding propaganda, and argued
Voice of America, BBG's oldest and biggest network, "should be given the
opportunity to take [its] rightful place in the graveyard of Cold War
relics." Further restrictions on the dissemination of the material were
implemented.
"The domestic dissemination ban was not really
intended to protect the American public from propaganda," Emily Metzgar,
a professor at Indiana University school of journalism and a former
U.S. diplomat who supports the change to the law, said. "The historical
record suggests it was really more about protecting a nascent broadcast
industry in the United States right after World War II, and it was over
time that more and more politics got interjected into the discussion."
Last year, two lawmakers proposed the bipartisan Smith-Mundt Modernization Act of 2012.
Introduced
by Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, and Adam Smith, D-Wash., the
Modernization Act
would have amended the 1948 Smith-Mundt Act so BBG's U.S.-funded,
foreign audience-intended broadcasts could finally be heard in the U.S
however that bill was not voted on, instead they choose to pass the bill tucked inside of the 1,898 page National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2013 a bill which included buying new submarines.
It became law on July 2
.
A spokeswoman for BBG pointed out the
broadcast group's content had been available online for years, and that
the new law just makes their programs accessible in broadcast quality in
the U.S. to anyone who requests them.
She also responded to a
slew of recent news headlines that suggested BBG would be spreading
propaganda, including one from Foreign Policy magazine, which read,
"U.S. Repeals Propaganda Ban, Spreads Government-Made News to
Americans."
"
Just because a news organization receives government
funding doesn't mean it disseminates propaganda," Lynne Weil, director
of communications and external affairs for BBG, said, citing Britain's
BBC as a government-supported media outlet.
"We stand "proudly" for the rights of the LGBT community" sound like propaganda to me
Metzgar, the former U.S. diplomat, was relaxed about the change.
"Everyone
who is consuming any news at all should be media-literate, reading from
a wide range of sources, triangulating what they can about the truth.
In that sense,
I'm not particularly alarmed about the government having a
new path to propagandize the public," she said.
A State
Department official said in an emailed statement to NBC News that "
the
statutory intent remains for us to focus such materials on foreign
audiences and not to pro-actively create materials for domestic
audiences or pro-actively distribute our materials domestically."
for now, and social security cards were originally only supposed to be for social security
BBG's journalists "risk their lives" to report in more than 100 countries and 61 languages, Weil said.
"This
is good-quality reporting in places where many U.S. media may not have
correspondents. Why shouldn't it be available in the United States?" she
said. "U.S. taxpayers should know what they're funding."
we do now and we don't like it
Ted
Lipien, a former Voice of America employee based in California who
retired from the network in 2006, said his biggest concern about BBG
expanding into the American market was the "quality" of their journalism
diminishing.
"The agency has been very badly mismanaged in recent
years," he said. "What I suspect will happen is that they will
de-emphasize providing news and information for foreign audiences, which
is their core and primary mission, and they will focus on the domestic
market."
Weil denied that will be an issue.
"The target
audience for BBG broadcasters will still be international – that is,
individuals living in countries where the media are not entirely free.
The new law doesn't change the legislation that mandates the BBG to
focus on audiences overseas, nor are we seeking to change that," she
said.
"It also does not direct or allow the BBG itself to begin
broadcasting in the United States, and we do not seek to do that,
either. But the new law does mean that the entire range of "great"
journalism
like pro homosexuality propaganda that U.S. taxpayer-supported civilian broadcasters produce
can now be seen and heard by more people — including the ones who pay
for it," she added.
(
nbcnews) highlighted are my additions
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