CarnalNation

This is a good time of year to be thinking about what human rights are and how to best protect them. Last Thursday, December 10, was the 61st annual celebration of Human Rights Day in commemoration of the United Nations' adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. Tomorrow, Thursday, December 17, will be the 7th annual International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, first observed in 2003 to commemorate the victims of Gary Ridgway, aka The Green River Killer, who murdered at least 48 and possibly more than 90 women in Washington State, most of them sex workers. In his statement to the court, Ridgway said that "I wanted to kill as many … as I possibly could. I knew they would not be reported missing right away, and might never be reported. I picked prostitutes because I thought I could kill as many of them as I wanted without getting caught."

Sitting between these two events, it behooves us to think very carefully about what we consider an essential human right. The right to one's sexuality isn't usually placed alongside rights such as free speech and freedom of religion, but as the Green River Killer and the "kill the gays" legislation that's making its way through the Ugandan parliament show, fear of sexuality can have consequences just as lethal as repression of speech or religion.

The mission of the Woodhull Freedom Foundation, which contributes their monthly column Taking Liberties to CarnalNation, is to promote exactly that idea: that sexuality is a fundamental human right, just as any other right to conscience. In order to better advance this concept, Woodhull recently announced that they've started work on creating their first annual report on the state of sexual freedom. In a press release, Woodhull President Ricci Levy said that the purpose of the report will be "to help identify the social changes taking place, or that must take place for progress to be made, on the diverse issues on which we work. We are particularly interested in recognizing opportunities for already-established sexual freedom issue groups to work together." As a first step, Woodhull is trying to find out what those groups and communities consider to be important via an online survey, open to anyone who wants to contribute their opinion.. Therapist Gloria Brame, who took the survey in one of the early stages, wrote on her blog that it " was very interesting because it made me re-think and prioritize freedoms—relatively speaking, how important is sex ed? how important is birth control? what about censorship and sexual freedom of speech? or should we all be focused on equality rights for now? This survey asks you to figure out where you stand on sex-related issues...." In the past few years, most public discussion of sexual freedoms has been boiled down to two issues: same-sex marriage and disease prevention. Sex as pleasure is a third rail in American public discourse, so it's rare that there's any conversation about it that isn't veiled either by romance or illness, never mind as a human right. We look forward to reading Woodhull's first report, and encourage people to contribute their thoughts on sexual freedom.