All people are equal. But some are more equal than others. Take for instance the situation of LGBTT people in the EU.
In the early 1990s gay rights activist Peter Tatchell remarked that there were 'tensions and contradictions within the Commission over how to respond to demands for lesbian and gay equality’. Although it would be possible to counter discrimination against LGBTTs on the grounds of contradicting the EC’s goal of creating an obstacle –free internal market the Commission chose to emphasize that it has no legal power to outlaw anti-homosexual discrimination, as this would be in conflict with the laws and values contained in the cultural traditions of the different member states. Imagine the same argument being used to defend long-standing ‘traditions’ of banning women from public life (including the right to vote), violence against women (honour killings), racism and anti-Semitism.
If the Employment Directive protects the rights of LGBTT people in the workplace, the question arises why protection from discrimination should be limited to the workplace for LGBTT people if the scope of the Race Directive1 , protecting ethnic minorities, is much wider.
In the EU homosexual couples are inferior to heterosexual couples. The EU is hereby lagging behind on the UN, as the judgments made by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) offer less protection to homosexual couples as those made by the UN Human Rights Committee (UN HCR). Compare the judgment of the HCR in Young v Australia (2000) with the ECJ decision in D v Council (1999). In Young v Australia, the UN HCR judged that the partner of an Australian veteran, was entitled to a government pension, as there was no reason to deny same-sex partners the government benefits offered to heterosexual couples. By contrast, the ECJ found in D v Council that a Swedish man in a civil partnership was not entitled to family benefits by his employer in Brussels, whereas he would have been entitled to those in Sweden. The underlying reasoning was that the Court did indeed find a legitimate reason to discriminate, which is that partnerships between persons of the same sex registered in one of the EU member states cannot be comparable to marriage between a woman and a man. In other words, LGBTT-partnerships are second-rate compared to heterosexual marriage.
It is utterly meaningless to talk about human rights and the right not to be discriminated against if these rights are not universal and indivisible. In the spirit of the idea and the fact that all people are truly equal we support the 6th deliverable of the Ecosy – Change for Europe manifesto.
