The NYT headline said "gay rights" rather than "gay human rights." There's a difference. Gay rights is "gays in the military." Gay human rights is being jailed, tortured and killed by your government simply because you're gay. Though if you're Rick Perry, the difference is negligible (more on that in a sec).
As part of its big gay foreign policy day yesterday, this new policy of using US foreign aid to promote the human rights of gay and trans people abroad was announced, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a 30+ minute address at the UN in Geneva about international human rights of gay and trans people.
Of course, that didn't stop GOP presidential hopeful (who isn't doing too well in the polls) Rick Perry from blasting the administration:
The report said that in Saudi Arabia, under Sharia law as interpreted in the country, “sexual activity between two persons of the same gender is punishable by death or flogging.
Saying he had seen news reports that the Obama administration “wants to make foreign aid decisions based on gay rights,” Mr. Perry said in a statement, “This administration’s war on traditional American values must stop.”So Rick Perry thinks gay people should be executed? Has someone followed up with Perry and asked him why he thinks the torture, imprisonment and murder of gay people are "traditional American values"?
He added: “President Obama has again mistaken America’s tolerance for different lifestyles with an endorsement of those lifestyles. I will not make that mistake.”
It's actually worse than that. Perry said that the administration was promoting "special rights" for gays. Which is an interesting thing to say say, that it's special rights when gays ask to not be beaten, tortured, and murdered.
Then again, this may all simply be another Rick Perry policy beard; his way of convincing evangelicals to ignore all the rumors about his private life that have dogged him for over two decades. And after the religious right fell for Ken Mehlman's repeated denials of the rumors dogging him, you'd have to imagine they'd be a tad more leery of being twice burned.
