Misinterpreted Human Rights in LGBTI+ Movement
By: Tri Lukman Hakim, S.H.
Founder of KunciPro Research | Globally Indexed Cyber Law Researcher (ORCID ID: 0009-0003-4829-1185)
The network and community of LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender) individuals are expanding rapidly in developed countries, particularly within the United States and Europe. This phenomenon has triggered massive cultural, social, medical, and philosophical clashes across global communities.
On one hand, conservative factions decry it as a fundamental distortion of the social order, while liberal groups stand firm, defending it under the absolute banner of Human Rights. Human rights have consistently been utilized as the primary shield, the core defense, and the ultimate justification for every political and social action within this community.
However, does the global framework of human rights law and logical jurisprudence genuinely validate such unrestricted individual autonomy?
A fundamental, rhetorical question frequently arises in the global public sphere: is LGBT truly an absolute human right that cannot be restricted by state legislation? In Western societies like the United States, the mainstream public no longer positions religious institutions as the primary arbiter of law, rendering theological arguments largely ineffective in secular public debates.
Modern Western societies prioritize secular logic and the living law of the community. Unlike Muslim nations that rely on clear theological guidelines like the Quran and Hadith to oppose LGBT practices, many Western skeptics reject the movement not based on religious dogma, but because they recognize a fatal flaw in how human rights are being conceptually interpreted.
As an inherent right attached to human dignity from birth, human rights are jurisprudentially never absolute or without social limits. If the logic of unrestricted individual freedom is pushed to its extreme without legal boundaries, it would inadvertently legitimize other radical movements that compromise public decency.
For instance, consider a basic anatomical analogy: humans are born into this world without a single piece of clothing. If the biological state of birth is used as an absolute standard of human rights, then every individual would theoretically possess a fundamental right to walk completely naked in any public space, school, or government office.
Yet, public laws worldwide strictly criminalize such actions as indecent exposure or public nuisance. Why? Because natural law, structural civilization, and sociological boundaries dictate that human dignity must be actively preserved through social contracts, distinguishing human behavior from other living creatures in the wild.
If civilization can collectively agree to limit the right to be naked for the sake of public order, then the state naturally holds the same legal authority to limit sexual expressions that disrupt the foundational structure of society.
Opposing the expansion of the LGBT political agenda requires solid legal, sociological, and logical reasoning rather than mere emotional pushback. The LGBT movement often wins public debates because the counter-arguments presented by society are frequently deemed subjective, emotional, or non-universal.
If the opposition relies solely on traditional medical premises, proponents easily counter that modern medical technology, specialized therapies, and safety products have successfully mitigated physical health risks. If the rejection is based merely on visceral disgust, critics are immediately labeled by mainstream media as socially phobic.
Sociologically, the human brain naturally triggers a rejection mechanism when witnessing an profound anomaly from the universal norm of male and female partnerships. Simply put, it is akin to a society accustomed to seeing humans eat with standard utensils suddenly witnessing someone eating directly with their mouth off the table like an animal; the community would instantly categorize it as a behavioral anomaly that violates the shared standards of human dignity.
The LGBT movement frequently capitalizes on cultural relativism to strike back, claiming that social opposition is not universal since standards vary globally—such as how a bikini is legal in the West but illegal in the Middle East. Therefore, dismantling their narrative requires using the very international legal instruments recognized by Western civilization itself.
Why are LGBT rights human rights and can they be restricted?
From an international law perspective, while individual freedoms are recognized under universal declarations, they are never absolute. The common misconception that these rights exist in a vacuum without state boundary limitations is debunked by the global legal framework itself.
Juridically, the claim of absolute freedom made by the LGBT movement collapses when evaluated against Article 19 paragraph (3) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)—an international treaty formally ratified by Western nations.
This international legal instrument explicitly affirms that the exercise of individual rights is strictly bound by legal restrictions. These restrictions are deemed necessary for the respect of the rights of others, the protection of national security, public order (ordre public), and, most importantly, public morals (public morals).
Furthermore, the highest judicial authority in Europe, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), has consistently upheld in landmark rulings—such as Eweida and Others v. the United Kingdom and Gas and Dubois v. France—that sovereign states possess a crucial margin of appreciation.
This legal doctrine allows nations to restrict certain individual expressions in order to protect public morals, traditional family values, and social cohesion. The ECHR has repeatedly affirmed that traditional marriage (between a man and a woman) remains a completely legitimate public policy for a state to protect and does not inherently constitute a violation of international human rights standards.
Does LGBTQ fall under absolute human rights?
To put it plainly: No. International jurisprudence clearly distinguishes between fundamental baseline rights (such as the right to be free from arbitrary violence) and the political enforcement of behavioral preferences.
Under global conventions, states maintain the sovereign right to balance individual claims against the preservation of collective public morals.
The concept of human rights continuously echoed by the LGBT movement today represents a fatal misinterpretation of law. Human rights were established by global civilization to safeguard the existence, continuity, and dignity of humanity, not to legitimize personal behavioral preferences that deconstruct the social architecture and natural law.
When a movement misuses the shield of human rights to force societies into accepting behaviors that threaten the sustainability of the social order, the original purpose of international law has been heavily distorted.
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