Due to a growing opposition, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) has decided to postpone the vote on a report, which claims to be protecting homosexuals from discrimination.
PACE, which has a total of 642 members, has rescheduled its business in voting on the report called Discrimination on the Basis of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (Document 12087) after a large number of amendments opposing the report were laid. The Assembly is expected to postpone the vote until its next session in April 2010 after examination by a Parliamentary Committee.
(Click here to see the amendments)
The European Centre for Law and Justice (ECLJ), a Christian legal group set to protect the rights of believers to worship and share the Christian message, warned parliamentarians in a Memorandum that the draft resolution should be amended ‘in order to maintain the definition of the family and to protect the fundamental right to disagree with the ideology of those promoting gender identity’.
(See the ECLJ report)
In the memorandum, the ECLJ examined the main provisions of the draft Resolution under the requirements of European and international law, and of the case law of the European Court of Human Rights. The Centre focused on the fact that such resolutions should not result in damage to the family and negate the fundamental rights of people who are not lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered (LGBT) – especially in the areas of freedom of speech and religious belief.
Dr. Grégor Puppinck, the director of the ECLJ, said he hopes that the PACE will understand that ‘the appropriate response to violence and unjust discrimination against LGBT people should not include eliminating moral pluralism. It is vital to protect and promote both free speech and freedom of religion in moral matters’.
PACE is one of the two statutory organs of the Council of Europe, which is composed of the Committee of Ministers (the Ministers of Foreign Affairs, meeting usually at the level of their deputies) and the Assembly representing the political forces (majority and opposition) in its member states.