ABSTRACT
Recognition of LGBT rights in Western Europe, the United States, some South American countries, and South Africa notwithstanding, LGBT persons continue to be subjected to discrimination and, in some places in the world, persecution. The first section of this chapter is meant only to briefly chronicle the reality of how widespread the discrimination and possible persecution that LGBT persons face are in order to establish the need to provide an interpretative framework for human rights to bring such discriminations and persecutions to an end. The focus of the chapter is thus directed toward showing that several of the most basic human rights LGBT people claim—such as the right to privacy, free expression, and equality before the law (including the right to marry members of the same sex)—are supported not only by the United States Constitution and various international law documents, but also by the writings of Alan Gewirth in Reason and Morality (1978) 1 and Self-Fulfillment (1998). 2 The role of this important set of philosophical writings on human rights by Gewirth is to provide a bridge for establishing a cross-national, rationally based dialogue for how LGBT rights get protected, within an already existing international human rights framework.
