Human Rights, Sexual Rights, the Muslim World, and Why ‘Pushing the Envelope’ Is Essential to Human Rights’ Global Resonance

The most contentious human rights debates deal with the treatment of minorities, and ethnic and gender minorities have been – in their own self-interest -- at the heart of advancing human rights claims as a response to embedded power structures that target them as a focus for rights violations. Most recently, sexual minorities have been at the forefront in pushing for an expanded conceptualization of human rights that would include them in its protections, and also have borne the brunt of angry reactions against assertions of alternative or multiple sexual identities. Political elites have advanced their nationalist/patriarchal credentials by demonizing and violating the rights of this vulnerable minority. Many mainstream theorists of human rights, therefore, see sexual rights as too contentious to be advanced, particularly in the Muslim world in the context of ongoing debates that pit monolithic ideas of ‘Islam’ and ‘human rights’ against each other. As seen in recent debates at the U.N., sexual rights can be seen as reinforcing notions of a binary split between the ‘West’ and the Muslim world and, therefore, cause more harm than potential good. So, should human rights be expanded to include reference to marginalized groups such as sexual minorities? This paper argues that for the human rights regime to maintain its relevance it is dependent on continuously evolving in response to normative currents. Rights’ foundations are too often misconceptualized as being about imposing a uniformity derived from static global standards. To the contrary, the process on which human rights relies for its relevance is far more dynamic. Rights allow for the possibility of internally articulated change by expanding human agency. This can give societies -- and those within societies -- the right and the power to change and transform themselves in diverse and contradictory ways; rights, therefore, are the foundation for diversity rather than uniformity. In empowering political, social and cultural agency, in turn, the ability to transform global human rights standards is given to a far more diverse community than were involved in the original design of documents such as the UDHR or bedrock human rights treaties. This leads to the discomfort of seeing previously marginalized groups makes claims to protections under a human rights rubric, claims that will sometimes discomfit those who see themselves as defenders of human rights and give political opportunity to elites threatened by human rights. Nonetheless, protections of both specific rights and non-discrimination against groups are interlinked: attention to one group (for example, women’s rights) implies attention to other groups (such as sexual minorities). These linkages are, ultimately, essential to maintaining human rights as a regime that is advanced by interchange with transnational grassroots normative currents. Recognizing this is not just essential to sexual minorities, but to sustaining the human rights regime as a focal point for emerging movements and discourses that seek an anchor for claims against dominant power structures