Manipulation of universal understanding of “Human Rights”

From yle News 20.11.2014 about same-sex marriage

(Finland is still one of the last countries in Europe not to have approved the law…)

“Interior Minister and Christian Democratic chair Päivi Räsänen meanwhile said in a radio interview yesterday that her opposition to marriage equality is based on the UN’s 1948 Declaration of Human Rights.

“If we think about the UN declaration, which is significant from the perspective of a universal understanding of human rights, it says that everyone has the right … every man and woman has the right to marriage, in other words it defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman,” Räsänen said on Radio Helsinki’s programme “Tasavalta” (The Republic).

Räsänen maintained that the definition of marriage as a union between a man and woman was not her own interpretation of the Declaration, but said that it constituted the objective meaning of the text.

“Well I say that this is interpretation is precisely what is meant. Otherwise it would have said that an adult person has the right to marriage. In other words it talks specifically about men and women, who have the right to marry. I am fully convinced that this is what is meant here,” she insisted”.

Article 16.1 of the Universal Declaration of Human rights states:

“Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.”