We did that exactly last week when reporting the story that we’re focusing on again tonight. Again, because the more we look into it, the more we find people in powerful and influential places saying thing that just don’t square with the facts. It’s about a U.N. treaty that failed to be ratified by the Senate. A treaty that was meant to encourage other countries to be more like the U.S. on the issue of equal rights for the disabled. Now if other countries adopted better treatment of their disabled citizens, the idea that disabled Americans who visited or lived in other countries would also benefit. 

 

Hundred and twenty-five countries had ratified the treaty. It was signed by Republican President George Bush, supported by the current president, and has the backing of senators from both sides of the aisle, including John McCain and past Republican leaders like Bob Dole, himself a disabled World War II Veteran. He was wheeled on to the Senate floor, you him there for the vote to see he hoped the treaty ratified. 

 

Well, instead after pressure from special interest groups, 38 Republicans, some of them vowed to support the treaty, voted no. One of the loudest critics of the legislation was the Home School Legal Defense Association, the HSLDA. It’s the powerful lobby group around the country whose leader you’re about to meet. Now they have some very strong things to say about the treaty, but the notion was basically this. If it were to pass, they said, the U.N. treaty would somehow let the U.N. mandate how parents of disabled kids in America cared for their children. Americans, among the center is echoing that center is Mike Lee of Utah. Keeping Them Honest though, when I asked him to specify how this U.N. influence might manifest itself, last week I asked him this, here‘s the answer he gave. 

 

Can you name any other U.N. treaty that has forced changes in U.S. law?

 

I didn’t come prepared to cite Supreme Court precedent on this point but it’s a well known fact…

 

But what you’re saying is hypothetical. You’re saying, you’re using a bunch of hypothetical saying they’re going to, you know, this is going to force abortion rights for people, for disabled people overseas. This is, they’re going to, I mean, some groups are saying children with glasses are going to be taken from their parents. You’re using all these very scary hypothetical. You can’t even cite one case where a U.N. treaty has ever impacted U.S. law?

 

I’m not aware of one person who’s saying that children with glasses are going to be taken away from their parents. The Article 7 concern from the treaty relates to the fact that the best interest of the child standard would be injected into decisions regarding how best to educate and otherwise care for a disabled child. (Again) It’s worked in the United States.

 

You can’t name one U.N. treaty that has ever had an impact on U.S. law?

 

Well, I can’t name one U.S. treaty that has been the deciding factor in a decision. It may well happen. I didn’t come prepared to cite Supreme Court precedent. 

 

Well, about that eye glass claim I mentioned, the head of the HSLDA made it. You’ll hear it for yourself in a moment. It also says the treaty would allow the United Nations to dictate, say, the number of handicapped parking spaces in church parking lots in America and allow U.N. bureaucrats in Geneva to change American laws. The evidence they cite, though, doesn’t stand up to the scrutiny, according to former Republicans Attorney General Richard Thornburgh, himself the father of a disabled son.