LGBTQ Advocates Urge The United Nations To Intervene In Texas

Five human rights groups issued a letter to the United Nations on Monday, arguing that Texas legislation has violated the rights of queer and trans people in the state.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, Equality Texas, GLAAD, the Human Rights Campaign and the Human Rights Clinic at the University of Texas at Austin School of Law signed a joint letter urging the United Nations’ human rights experts to call on the federal and Texas state governments to protect LGBTQ+ people.

In the letter, the advocacy groups argue that Texas has violated the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights treaty, which recognizes the rights of all humans to enjoy “civil and political freedom and freedom from fear.”

The ICCPR, which was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in 1976 and enforced 10 years later, was ratified by the U.S. in 1992. As a result, it became “the ‘supreme law of the land’ under the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which gives ratified treaties the status of federal law,” according to the ACLU.

“Thus, the United States—including its federal and state entities—is obligated to act in accordance with this treaty,” the letter says.

As curtailing access to gender-affirming care and trans people’s participation in sports has become a political crusade among the Republican Party in the past few years, Texas’ GOP government has engaged in some of the country’s harshest attacks on LGBTQ+ rights.

“We are now in crisis mode in Texas,” Johnathan Gooch, the communications director at Equality Texas, told HuffPost. “Hopefully this petition to the U.N. will start to remind people about the rights that they have under international law and hopefully we can begin to hold state lawmakers accountable for