When people site religious or cultural values as a reason to violate or no to protect the human rights of Lesbian Gays and Bisexual citizens, this is not unlike the justification offered toward violence against women or female genital mutilations. Some people still defend those practices as part of a cultural tradition but violence towards women is not cultural is criminal.
Likewise with slavery what was once justify as sanctioned by God, is now properly referred as unquestionable violation of human rights, in each of this cases we came to learn that no practice or tradition triumph the human right that belong to all of us.
And this not true for inflicting violence on LGB people, criminalizing their status or behaviors, expelling them from their families, and communities or explicitly accepting their killings, Of course we note that rarely are cultural or religion traditions and teaching actually in conflict with protection of human rights. Indeed our religion and culture are sources of compassion and inspirations towards our fellow human being. It was not only those who justified slavery that leaned on the religion it was also those who sought to abolish it.
And let us keep in mind that our commitment to protect religious freedom and to defend the dignity of LGB people emanates from a common source. For many of us religious brief and practice is a vital source of meaning and identity and fundamental to whom we are as a people. And likewise for most of us the bonds of love in family that we forge are also vital sources of meaning and identity and caring for others is an expression of what it means to be fully human.
It because the human experience is universal that human right are universal and categorize all religion and culture.
