The support of President Carlos Alvarado for the conscientious objection clause included in the Public Employment bill today provokes the rejection of organizations of the LGBTIQ community in Costa Rica.
Conscientious objection allows public officials to reject any training that they consider shocking with their religious, moral or ethical convictions, and was supported by Alvarado to have the votes of the Pentecostal fractions for the legal proposal of Public Employment, which is analyzed by the Legislative Assembly.
Resignation
Due to this clause, the presidential commissioner ad honorem for LGBTIQ Affairs (Lesbian and Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex and Queer) of Costa Rica, Margarita Salas, resigned this Monday and in a letter to Alvarado affirms that “as a feminist and LGBTIQ activist I cannot continue working hand in hand with an administration that instead of protecting human rights is violating them.”
After ensuring that introducing this clause into the legislation heads up the only protection available so that training in the public sector is both a right and a duty, Salas underlines that conscientious objection opens a ‘dangerous doorway’ to ‘fundamentalist and anti-political groups.
A Presidential slap
Shortly after, several LGBTIQ organizations assured in a statement that “the repudiable exchange of science and Human Rights in the Public Employment bill is a presidential slap for the entire community that believed that it would never walk alone again.”
“As signatory organizations, we repudiate the actions of President Alvarado, who today tries to minimize the importance of training, information and education for those who make up the state apparatus, which, in its administrative and judicial management, must be the guarantor of human rights”, stated the organization.
Forceful action
They continue: “as an organized community, we will take forceful actions and go to the necessary instances, in order to protect the advancement of human rights and science, which will never again be a bargaining chip for the nonsense of a fickle and incongruous government.”
The signatories of the statement demand that the President and the ruling legislative fraction withdraw support for initiatives that are detrimental to the progressiveness of the rights of all people and that distort public management and weaken the Social State of Law.
