Republican lawmakers demand action after UN validates pedophilia

Republican senators Friday demanded action from the US ambassador to the United Nations following a report, endorsed by the UN, that validates pedophilia and proposes decriminalizing adult sex with minors.

Last month, the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), a consortium of 60 lawyers and judges around the world, published The 8 March Principles for a Human Rights-Based Approach to Criminal Law Proscribing Conduct Associated with Sex, Reproduction, Drug Use, HIV, Homelessness and Poverty.

The report, which received full UN endorsement, grants validity to pedophilia by claiming that despite age of consent laws, children do indeed have the “capacity to consent”. According to the report's preamble,

[I]nternational human rights law requires paying due regard to adolescents’ evolving capacity to consent in certain contexts, in fact, even if not in law, when they are below the prescribed minimum age of consent in domestic law.

In Principle 16 of the report, the ICJ insists that age of consent laws must be “non-discriminatory”:

With respect to the enforcement of criminal law, any prescribed minimum age of consent to sex must be applied in a non-discriminatory manner. Enforcement may not be linked to the sex/gender of participants or age of consent to marriage. 

Then, the ICJ stresses that children can indeed consent to sex, and authorities must consider a child’s capacity to consent before enforcing laws regarding sexual conduct involving kids:

Moreover, sexual conduct involving persons below the domestically prescribed minimum age of consent to sex may be consensual in fact, if not in law. In this context, the enforcement of criminal law should reflect the rights and capacity of persons under 18 years of age to make decisions about engaging in consensual sexual conduct and their right to be heard in matters concerning them. Pursuant to their evolving capacities and progressive autonomy, persons under 18 years of age should participate in decisions affecting them, with due regard to their age, maturity and best interests, and with specific attention to non-discrimination guarantees. 

The report also proposes decriminalizing prostitution and demands that “[a]bortion must be taken entirely out of the purview of the criminal law.”

On Friday, seven Republican US senators signed a letter to US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield in which they cite the report’s statements concerning age of consent:

“We, therefore, request your immediate opposition to these efforts and to rescind any U.S. taxpayer money that may have directly or indirectly supported United Nations activities related to the report,” the letter says.

“The ICJ report gives credence to abhorrent pedophiles and sexual predators who claim that their vile acts should be decriminalized because children would be able to consent to sex. It is imperative that we stand against any effort that undermines the existing legal protections that safeguard children from sexual predators,” the letter concludes, signed by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN), Sen. Michael Lee (R-UT), Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT), Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA), and Sen. Ted Budd (R-NC).

For its part, the ICJ published a statement last week responding to public backlash, claiming the report has “been seriously misrepresented on a number of social media and websites.” The statement did not describe how it was misrepresented.

The 8 March Principles do not call for the decriminalization of sex with children, nor do they call for the abolition of a domestically prescribed minimum age of consent to sex. Indeed, the ICJ stresses that States have a clear obligation under international law to protect children from all forms of abuses, such as child sexual abuse, including through the criminalization of such conduct.