Over 100K sign petition asking US to stop UN from adding gender ideology to international law

A petition urging top U.S. diplomats to ensure that a clarification that the term "gender" refers to the two biological sexes is not removed from international law has garnered over 140,000 signatures amid concerns that a pending U.N. convention will be used to "criminalize legitimate pro-life and pro-family beliefs, speech, or public policy."

Last week, the pro-life advocacy organization CitizenGO launched a petition addressed to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Mike Waltz and U.S. delegates to the U.N., highlighting concerns about the inclusion of gender ideology as part of the ongoing development of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes Against Humanity.

Following the U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York City on Tuesday, the petition has garnered over 140,000 signatures and is rapidly adding more.

The petition requests that U.S. diplomats "defend legal certainty in this text; specifically, to restore the definition of 'gender' that States have already agreed to, and to oppose the introduction of terms that lack strict guidelines to safeguard pro-life and pro-family citizens."

According to the petition, "In 1998, the Rome Statute settled this question. Article 7(3) states that 'the term 'gender' refers to the two sexes, male and female, within the context of society.' Article 7(1)(h) criminalizes persecution on gender grounds and refers back to that definition explicitly. This is not contested language — it is binding treaty law, ratified by the U.S. and by 120 other States."

The Rome Statute language is binding treaty law, but the United States is not a party to the statute. It signed the treaty in 2000 but never ratified it, and in 2002 the George W. Bush administration formally withdrew the U.S. signature altogether.

"The draft articles for this Convention removed that definition," the petition noted. The draft articles, originally formulated in 2019, acknowledge that "the Commission decided not to include the definition of 'gender' found in article 7, paragraph 3, of the 1998 Rome Statute, thereby allowing the term to be applied for the purposes of the present draft articles based on an evolving understanding as to its meaning."

"A similar approach of viewing gender as a socially constructed (rather than biological) concept has been taken by various other international authorities and in the jurisprudence of international criminal courts and tribunals," the draft articles state.

Another cause for concern listed in the petition is the proposal of "new and undefined concepts, such as 'gender apartheid,' [and] 'sexual or reproductive violence.'"

"A convention reserved for genocide, extermination, enslavement, and torture would carry terms whose meaning no State has agreed on, and whose interpretation would fall to whoever litigates first," the petition warned. "The practical consequence is foreseeable. Laws protecting unborn children, and positions on family and on the biological reality of male and female, have long been matters of democratic debate, debated in parliaments, decided by voters. Under an undefined framework, they could be reinterpreted as violations of international criminal law."

The petition stressed that "Crimes against humanity must remain clearly defined and reserved for atrocities that are universally recognized as such" while urging Rubio, Waltz and the U.S. delegation to the U.N. to "Support restoring the Rome Statute's Article 7(3) definition of 'gender' in the Convention text, as already agreed language" and "oppose the inclusion of undefined terms such as 'gender apartheid' and 'sexual or reproductive violence.'"

The petition also called on the top U.S. diplomats to "ensure this Convention cannot be used to criminalize legitimate pro-life and pro-family beliefs, speech, or public policy."

The webpage containing the petition text provided additional details on the negotiations for the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crimes Against Humanity.

"Defending life, protecting your children, or simply saying that men and women are biologically different could one day be treated as a crime against humanity," CitizenGO stated. "It sounds extreme. But that is exactly what is being negotiated at the United Nations right now. A treaty built to prosecute horrific crimes like genocide, enslavement and torture is being rewritten to carry vague and undefined 'gender' concepts."

"Governments have already filed the amendments," the petition adds, noting that "Belgium and Colombia have formally proposed adding 'sexual or reproductive violence' (praying near abortion mills) to the negotiating text" while "Iceland, Mexico and Timor-Leste have proposed a second new concept: 'gender apartheid.'"

It further warns that the "broad language" of the term "could turn disagreements over education, family policy, women's spaces, and parental rights into crimes against humanity."

"Once this language is agreed, it is not reopened next year with better wording," the petition states. "It becomes the framework that governments, courts and institutions work from for decades — shaping what you can say, what your children are taught, and what you are still allowed to defend in your own country."

After warning that parents refusing "sex-change" treatments for their child, teachers explaining basic biology of males and females, a pastor preaching God's Word about sexuality and gender as well as a doctor insisting that life begins at conception could be targeted under the new language, CitizenGO outlined the next steps: "The U.N.'s Sixth Committee takes up this treaty in October. But delegations do not decide their position in that room — they arrive with instructions already written in their own capitals."

"A handful of governments have already objected," CitizenGO explained. "They defended the biological reality of male and female and demanded clear legal definitions, and they are holding that line almost alone. Most of the others have said nothing at all. And at the U.N., silence is treated as agreement."