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All Our Families Deserve Human Rights
Copyright WILD, 2000

The ability to marry and found a family is one of the basic human rights of all people.

Marriage and domestic partnership are legally tied to health, housing, work, property, the ability to make medical decisions and care for children, and other basic needs. Limiting who is legally recognized as a family violates the right to found a family and restricts access to the right to health, right to housing, economic and property rights that depend on legalized family ties.

All people have basic human rights that must be upheld for our dignity, well-being, and humanity. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which the United States has ratified, guarantee these rights to all people.

The right to marry and found a family (ICCPR, Art. 23) without distinction of any kind, including sex (ICCPR, Art. 2), is enshrined in human rights law that the United States has ratified and is obligated to uphold. Legislation against same-sex marriages has been used to deny the domestic partnerships, relationships, and shared responsibilities of same-sex families. It restricts the ability of families of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people and their children to visit each other in the hospital, share health insurance coverage, inherit from and own property together. The denial of these rights jeopardizes our human rights to health, standard of living, work, and housing.

It also threatens unmarried heterosexual couples and single-parent families. Attempts to legislate who gets recognized as a family and restrict who is seen as fit to be parents promote discrimination against families of all races, genders, and classes by asserting that some families are more valued than others.

Children too are entitled to human rights. We deserve a society where every young person can thrive without fear of homophobic, racist, and sexist violence or prejudice. Our children deserve communities that protect their basic human rights and dignity.

Domestic partnership laws, child custody, and adoption laws help protect the human rights of children of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender parents and single parents. Moreover, legalization of hatred bolsters homophobic violence against all youth, especially transgender, bisexual, lesbian, and gay youth and the children of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and single parents, in their communities and schools. This violence threatens their right to bodily integrity and self-worth (ICCPR, Arts. 6 & 7). Children's human right to education (UDHR, Art.26) is jeopardized by homophobic and discriminatory treatment of their families in educational institutions.

All people must be guaranteed their human rights, which include civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights. We need a society that protects the human rights of all our families.

Note: The United States ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) in 1992 and pledged to uphold the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948.

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