Dear Editor,

At a conference of Caribbean Ombudsman held in 2004, during a discussion on rights I asked the person sitting next to me, an eminent UWI professor: when are we going to discuss duties and responsibilities? The professor answered: let others do that. This response made me realize that there may have been even before then, an international agenda to remove human rights out of the context of Natural Law and away from the idea of justice.

Justice, as you know, is that quality of thinking and acting by which everyone is given his due. It applies to every encounter between humans. There are no exceptions, except when a person wronged or violated chooses to exercise mercy, compassion, or love. In these instances the civilization of man becomes more pointed to a more exalted state of being. But, for the sake of order, the demands and requirements of justice should be observed and obeyed, as a general rule.

When I wrote the “Foreword” of the Ombudsman Annual Report for 2003-2004, I made this comment: “Rights considered as set apart and in contradiction to the common good and the public interest will continue to contribute to the development of a culture of egoism. On the other hand, the human person must stand delicately poised between what the proper maturing of his own selfhood requires and what the community requires of him to help others achieve the fulfillment of their selfhood. Wherever any successful attempt is made to exaggerate either of these poles, i.e. self or society, it results in aberrations that dehumanize the human person.”

Abortion is the result of the greatest exaggeration of the power of one right over the other. Between the right of privacy of a person and the right of the life of another, it is self-evident that justice requires a preference for life, without which no other right can exist.

The Belize Constitution in its treatise on fundamental rights and freedoms speaks to this point with absolute clarity where it says in CH II, 3, that the protection of rights and freedoms are subject to limitations that ensure the enjoyment of the same rights by others or the public interest.

All those who presume to speak about human rights should read and study this treatise on rights.

The claim that gay marriage is based on a human right is simply erroneous. Can an act that is obviously unnatural be a right? Homosexuality does proceed from a choice, for every human act is a choice; but every choice does not proceed from a right. The acts that we judge to be crimes all proceed from choices made. They proceed from the lower appetites which need to be disciplined and controlled.

Nowhere does our Belize Constitution list homosexuality or sexual and reproductive rights as fundamental rights and freedoms.

There is an international campaign being waged in Belize to destroy the values of Western Civilization. The main battle of this war is to destroy Christianity by making it seem irrelevant and irrational. Christians who speak out against abortion, contraception, gay marriage, and other immoral behavior are demonized and isolated.

In past ages the aggressive and rapacious communities of Europe colonized us to rape us. But they gave us the blessings of Christianity. Now they seek to destroy this pearl of great price and replace it with half-baked ideas, like egoism, relativism and homosexuality. This reminds me of the blankets infested with smallpox given to the Indians to warm them, which wiped out whole tribes.

Belize will do well if she rejects the agenda of immorality and unbelief and sticks to the wisdom of the ages embodied in Christianity.

It is crystal clear that the continued survival of Western Civilization requires a re-assessment of the necessity of justice as a primary societal value taking precedence over individual rights. Pursuit of the Common Good is how to show the primacy of justice.

Paul Rodriguez