The so-called 'sexual rights'
I just read the executive summary of “Sexual Rights: An IPPF Declaration,” a document of the umbrella organization globally promoting family planning, abortion, etc., called the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF).
I think it is an important document because it puts together the core principles of this group. It contains the federation’s DNA or its identity, and the source of its life and energy for its worldwide campaign.
I don’t need to summarize it again here, but rather to focus on its disturbing and highly questionable features. Hopefully, more people can be made aware of this organization and its maneuvering agenda that’s responsible, let’s call a spade a spade, for the spread of immoral sexual morality all over the world.
In our country, for example, its fingerprints can be found in the now-pending bills in Congress: the Reproductive Health Bill and the Bill for the Magna Carta for Women.
In purely political issues, I respect plurality of opinions and can accept positions contrary to my personal political views. But in issues that directly involve morality, universal and absolute in nature, we should be do our best to arrive at the right position. This so-called “sexual rights” is one such issue.
The document obviously has very good features, and this is where the danger is at its worst. The devil, the father of lies, is an expert in sweet talk, expertly blending the good and the evil, and craftily covering lies with a patina of truths.
Remember that in tempting Christ, the devil also quoted Scripture. The document bears the same character. And sad to say, my observation is that many people now are talking in that way, even coming up with massive and systematic logic and rationalization, but corrupted at the root.
What I find as very alarming provisions are the following sections as presented in the executive summary:
- “Principle 4. Sexuality, and pleasure deriving from it, is a central aspect of being human, whether or not a person chooses to reproduce.”
- “The entitlement to experience and enjoy sexuality independent of reproduction, and reproduction independent of sexuality should be safeguarded, paying particular attention to those who, historically and in the present, are denied such entitlement.”
These provisions detach human sexuality from its proper context and purpose. They make sexuality just a tool for any arbitrary purpose, including aberrations and perversions. Thus, we can have same-sex unions, and the like.
- “Principle 6. Sexual rights may be subject only to those limitations determined by law for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and the general welfare in a democratic society.”
- “All persons have the right to be recognized before the law and to sexual freedom, which encompasses the opportunity for individuals to have control and decide freely on matters related to sexuality, to choose their sexual partners, to seek to experience their full sexual potential and pleasure…”
- “All persons have the right to exercise freedom of thought, opinion and expression regarding ideas on sexuality, sexual orientation, gender identity and sexual rights, without arbitrary intrusions or limitations based on dominant cultural beliefs or political ideology or discriminatory notions of public order, public morality, public health or public security.”
These provisions remove sexuality and sexual rights from the sphere of morality and confine them strictly to the field of legality and the democratic system, or the law of popularity and consensus. This is outright relativism, which accepts no absolute rule to govern us.
In this relativistic frame of mind, every position is just as good as any other. There’s no more right or wrong, outside from what may cause some public disorder, which now becomes the supreme criterion for any claim at human right.
As long as a person considers something—anything at all—to be his right, provided it does not go against public order, then it is a valid human right. In fact, it would be against human right to consider such claim of human right as wrong.
There are more questionable features, but I think these provisions will suffice to give us more than enough reason to be afraid of this document, and the ideology that underpins it.
All of us need to be alerted by what appears now as a global conspiracy to infuse our world with the principles of moral relativism, a morality without God, who’s supposed to be the source and end of our morality.
(Fr. Cimagala is the Chaplain of Center for Industrial Technology and Enterprise (CITE), Talamban, Cebu City. Email: roycimagala@gmail.com)