GENEVA, Switzerland, Dec. 7 (UPI) -- Using U.S. foreign aid to promote gay rights is part of an Obama administration "war on traditional American values," GOP White House hopeful Rick Perry said.
"This is just the most recent example of an administration at war with people of faith in this country," Perry said after President Barack Obama issued a memo and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a speech Tuesday aligning gay rights with human rights.
Clinton told the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, "Some have suggested that gay rights and human rights are separate and distinct, but in fact they are one and the same."
Obama and Clinton said the administration would combat efforts by other nations that criminalize or ignore abuse against homosexual conduct, abuse lesbians, gay men, bisexuals or transgendered people.
The administration, which acknowledged America's own record on LGBT equality is "far from perfect," will not cut foreign aid based on another nation's practices, the White House said.
"This administration's war on traditional American values must stop," said Perry, governor of Texas, adding that preventing the persecution and execution of LGBT people amounted to "promoting special rights for gays."
"Obama has again mistaken America's tolerance for different lifestyles with an endorsement of those lifestyles. I will not make that mistake," Perry said.
Obama has not said he favored same-sex marriage. But he successfully pushed for repeal of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy that prevented gays from serving openly in the U.S. military.
And the Justice Department has said it will no longer defend in court the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman.
Clinton told the U.N. audience, which included diplomats from Arab, African and other countries where homosexuality is banned and sex between people of the same sex is punishable by death or flogging, "The obstacles standing in the way of protecting the human rights" of LGBT people "rest on deeply held personal, political, cultural and religious beliefs."
But she said gay rights transcended national, political and even culture boundaries, arguing they were universal rights like those that adopted by 48 nations Dec. 10, 1948, in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The declaration said, "All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights ... without distinction of any kind."
"Gay people are born into, and belong to, every society in the world," Clinton said. "They are all ages, all races, all faiths. They are doctors and teachers, farmers and bankers, soldiers and athletes.
"Being gay is not a Western invention," she said. "It is a human reality."
Clinton aides had worried about the reaction of some countries at the Human Rights Council, and therefore did not advertise her remarks' theme before she delivered them, The New York Times reported.
In the end, no representatives from the council's 47 member nations walked out, and the audience gave her a standing ovation, the Times said.
