Senate sinks controversial U.S. ambassador to El Salvador nomination
- Dec 15, 2011 -
A controversial U.S. ambassador may be coming home for Christmas—and staying for a lot longer. In what many American and Latin American social conservatives are hailing as a victory, the U.S. Senate this week voted down the nomination of Mari Carmen Aponte to continue serving as U.S. ambassador to El Salvador. Among concerns: her advocacy for the homosexual cause from the diplomatic position.
In a largely unnoticed action Monday night, the Senate pounded what could be the proverbial final nail in Aponte’s ambassadorial coffin, voting 49-37 on her nomination, 11 votes shy of the 60 needed for her to remain in her ambassador post after the end of the year, when her August 2010 recess appointment expires.
Prior to her recess appointment, Aponte had been nominated to serve as ambassador to the Latin American nation, but evidence of her past ties to Cuban intelligence officials raised serious questions about her fitness for service. Rather than disclose requested information to the Senate, President Obama appointed her during a congressional recess.
But another concern surrounded Monday’s confirmation vote. It stems back to June, when the ambassador penned an op-ed in an El Salvadoran newspaper detailing the need to overcome “homophobia” as a society. “Homophobia and brutal hostility are often based on lack of understanding about what it truly means to be gay or transgender,” she wrote in La Prensa Grafica, adding that everyone has a responsibility to “inform our neighbors and friends about what it means to be lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.” The op-ed followed a State Department call to embassies to publish op-eds in support of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) awareness month.
Some senators remained vocal in her defense. Aponte “is an advocate for national security and American values” in the region, said Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), according to the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call.
But is she really promoting “American values”? For millions of Americans who believe homosexuality is not an acceptable lifestyle, that answer may be no. The editorial did not sit well with Sens. Jim DeMint (R-SC) and Marco Rubio (R-FL), among others, who seized upon the piece as part of their opposition to Aponte’s nomination. And many Salvadorans say she is out of touch with their values, too.
As highlighted by Sen. DeMint, a band of religious and pro-family groups in Latin America issued a chilling rebuke of Aponte’s message. “Ms. Aponte, in clear violation of the rules of diplomacy and international law, you intend to impose to Salvadorans, disregarding our profound Christian values, rooted in natural law, a new vision of foreign and bizarre values, completely alien to our moral fiber, intending to disguise this as ‘human rights,’” wrote the coalition in El Diario de Hoy.
“The coalition, which includes dozens of organizations from El Salvador and other countries like Mexico and Honduras, said the only thing that they agreed with Ms. Aponte about is that violence against homosexuals should be repudiated,” noted Sen. DeMint.
The coalition later wrote the Senate noting that she has demonstrated “a clear disdain concerning our values and cultural identity” and urging lawmakers to oppose her nomination and remove her as ambassador “as soon as possible.”
The nomination fight comes against the backdrop of a speech delivered by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton a week earlier on International Human Rights Day, commemorating the 1948 adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. In an address devoted to the rights of homosexuals, she underscored that the administration “defends the human rights of LGBT people as part of our comprehensive human rights policy.” This, in itself, is not troublesome. Indeed, “[a]ll people,” as she added, “deserve to be treated with dignity and have their human rights respected, no matter who they are or whom they love.” As the Latin American coalition iterated, all violence against homosexuals should be decried.
But what’s giving some pro-family conservatives pause is the administration’s heightened level of commitment to defending LGBT human rights, elevating it to what Secretary Clinton called “a priority of our foreign policy.” As a demonstration of that heightened level of commitment, the administration issued a memo Dec. 6 on “International Initiatives to Advance the Human Rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Persons” instructing federal agencies engaged in foreign affairs “to promote and protect the human rights of LGBT people.”
Such statements raise questions on where, precisely, those concerns presently fit in the grid of foreign policy objectives.
As the U.S. government considers its global agenda, it should bear in mind the “First Freedom” of the United States: religious freedom. Sadly, this God-given freedom is regularly denied across the globe. With untold numbers of people from religious minorities—many of them Christians—being persecuted or killed daily for their faith, religious freedom ought to be atop the priorities we seek to advance abroad. It is much more than an American value—it’s a universal right.
Further Learning
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