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Showing posts with the label International Commission of Jurists

'Evolving standards' of international law should overturn anti-sodomy law: Belize lawsuit

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Ten years ago, the late, great American jurist Robert Bork wrote a short book entitled  Coercing Virtue: The Worldwide Rule of Judges .  He described how the “American disease” of judicial legislating—activists using constitutional courts “to outflank majorities and nullify their votes” on controversial social issues—was becoming a global phenomenon. Among other examples, Bork noted a conference held in London in 1999 “to consider ways of making homosexual conduct a constitutional right in various nations.”  As happened with abortion—a phenomenon documented in Susan Yoshihara’s and Douglas Sylva’s  Rights by Stealth —a coterie of “experts” in the field of “human rights” tasked themselves with refashioning norms in the area of “sexual orientation and gender identity” and exporting such novel norms to countries that adhered to old-fashioned principles such as rule of law and constitutional separation of powers. On May 7-10 at the Supreme Court of Belize , in t...

Christian churches file court papers today in fight over sodomy in Belize

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Image via Wikipedia A lawsuit backed by powerful international lawyers and pressure groups has placed the poor Central American country of Belize in the crosshairs of an international battle over homosexuality. On one side of the battle stand three groups of international lawyers. On the other side is the government of Belize and a consortium of Christian Churches who have hired high- powered legal talent who are expected to file papers in court today. The battle began last September when a homosexual advocacy group challenged Belize’s criminal code, which penalizes “carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any person.” The Solicitor General of Belize answered this challenge in February with an affidavit defending the sodomy laws, which drew a further response from a powerful group of lawyers including the International Commission of Jurists , the Commonwealth Lawyers Association , and Human Dignity Trust to join the case as interested parties.   One of the at...