This week marks the anniversary of the adoption of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations. December 10th is International Human Rights Day. Unfortunately, this is a day celebrated mostly by leftists, who have hijacked “human rights” in recent times to serve their own misguided agenda. However, true human rights as they have been understood through the centuries spring from and epitomize the biblical world view.
Unlike most of the left wing activists exploiting International Human Rights Day as an opportunity to attack Christianity and champion sexual perversion, I am actually a credentialed human rights attorney with special U.N. sponsored training in Strasbourg. I am also author of the Riga Declaration on Religious Freedom, Family Values and Human Rights which documents that religious freedom and family values have been staunchly protected in 4000 years of written human rights law, but that the “right” of homosexuality is an invention of modern liberalism.
Moreover, this “right to sodomy” actually undermines true human rights, as exemplified by the collapse of the Magna Charta (alternately spelled Magna Carta) in the United Kingdom. The first principle of that venerable human rights document declares that “The English Church shall be free.” This principle, established in the bedrock of British jurisprudence in 1215, stood unshakable for nearly 800 years until the rise of the “gay” movement which has in just the past decade achieved the power to redefine religious liberty as “homophobia” and to crush it under the heels of its pink jackboots.
One of the highlights of my world travels was having the opportunity to see one of the original handwritten copies of the Magna Charta at Salisbury Cathedral in England. It is one of only three remaining of the original eleven. That was in 1997 on my way to complete my studies at the University of Strasbourg‘s Institute for International Human Rights. On that day the Magna Charta still stood.
Exactly ten years later in 2007, on my way to Warsaw, Poland to speak on human rights at the World Congress of Families IV, I made a brief stop in Dublin, Ireland. There I met with a Christian street activist who was literally in hiding from the police under threat of arrest for speaking against homosexuality on the public sidewalks in violation of the new Sexual Orientation Regulations (SROs). The bulwark of the Magna Charta could no longer protect this Christian brother. After eight centuries it had finally been breached — by militant activists of the “gay” movement. The news stories coming out of the UK since then paint an increasingly dismal picture for believers.
Today there is only one human rights document still standing as a barrier to the homosexual agenda in the west: the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Indeed, this is the very source of the religious liberty and freedom of speech clauses of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights upon which all modern human rights laws and treaties rest. (The first half of the Universal Declaration was drafted by the Americans, the latter half by the Soviets in the days following the completion of the Nurenberg war crimes trials of the Nazi leaders by the Allies).
Yet despite the emergence of the Universal Declaration and all of its statutory progeny, no country in the world has been as stalwart in defense of religious liberty and freedom of speech as the United States — because of the First Amendment. However, even as we celebrate International Human Rights Day, the First Amendment is under siege by the same forces that brought down the Magna Charta. In recent years it has survived a series of assaults that continue to grow in frequency and severity with no end in sight.
In less than a month, on January 7th, 2013 I will appear in federal court here in Springfield, Massachusetts with my attorney from Liberty Counsel. There, he will present our oral argument in support of our Motion to Dismiss the case against me for “Crimes Against Humanity.” I am being sued by Sexual Minorities Uganda (SMUG) for preaching against homosexuality in that country. At issue is the strength of the First Amendment to protect my right to preach the Gospel in a foreign country.
In essence, the Plaintiffs contend that the same European embrace of homosexual “human rights” that empowered the SORs of the UK and took down the Magna Charta represents a new international legal norm that must be enforced across the globe. Thus, even though preaching against homosexuality is protected speech both in Uganda and the United States, I should be held liable for it based on SMUG’s interpretation of “international law.” Granted, it seems ridiculous, but so did the idea of the SORs before they became law in the UK.
I would like to take the opportunity of this anniversary to call for prayer. Not so much for myself, but for our nation. Because a loss to these plaintiffs under these pleadings would mean a breach of First Amendment in the same manner as the Magna Charta. If the First Amendment cannot protect my rights of religious liberty and freedom of speech in a foreign country, how much less will they protect all of us here in our own country. Indeed, haven’t we already begun to see “sexual orientation” trump religious liberty (and to a lesser extent freedom of speech) as a legal trend? How much worse will it be if the federal courts accept European legal reasoning in their rulings?
My friends, understand the gravity of what I am saying. If the First Amendment falls to the “gays” like the Magna Charta did, true human rights will be finished in America (and by extension the rest of the western world). There is no fall-back position. The First Amendment is the last bastion of freedom for Christians. If it fails, serious persecution of all who dare to speak the truth of the Bible will follow close behind. Pray fervently that it will stand!
