Post submitted by Stephen Peters,  former Senior National Press Secretary and Spokesperson

HRC strongly condemned the appointment of two individuals from anti-LGBTQ organizations to the U.S. delegation to the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), which is currently being held at the United Nations in New York. In a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, HRC called on Secretary Tillerson to immediately rescind the appointments of Lisa Correnti of the Center for Family & Human Rights (C-FAM) and Grace Melton of the Heritage Foundation.

“It’s appalling and completely unacceptable that individuals from organizations peddling hatred against LGBTQ people and their families have been appointed to an extremely important commission on women’s rights,” said Ty Cobb, Director of HRC Global. “To be clear, these individuals and the organizations they represent do not serve the best interests of women -- including lesbian, bisexual,  transgender and queer women -- in the United States and around the globe.”

The letter from HRC to Secretary Tillerson states, “If the United States is truly committed to improving the lives of women, including LBTQ women, in the U.S. and beyond, then Lisa Correnti and Grace Melton and the organizations they represent should not be the public face of our delegation. We urge you to immediately rescind the appointment of these delegates who do not represent our shared American values.”

C-FAM has been designated as an anti-LGBTQ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.  Its President, Austin Ruse, is a highly visible international anti-LGBTQ extremist.  He has called for help in stopping the “ghastly work” of the United Nations in protecting LGBTQ people from violence and discrimination, calling those efforts “deadly propaganda.”  Lisa Correnti, its Vice President, has her own long anti-LGBTQ record. She recently co-authored an article that referred to the Trump Administration’s efforts to undo policies protecting women, including LBTQ women, from violence.  

The Heritage Foundation is an organization that asserts that laws protecting LGBTQ people are not “necessary” and that they “weaken …the freedom of citizens and their associations to affirm their religious or moral convictions.”  Grace Melton herself complained when “radical feminists” attempted to include protections for LBTQ women in the Sustainable Development Goals.

Read the full letter here.