A PROCLAMATION: 
“The great state of (you name it) expresses thanks to our United States Senators for helping to nullify the laws and prerogatives of this and all other states and for turning America’s National Sovereignty over to a self-appointed Committee of Foreign Experts.”
Unlikely proclamation?  You bet – but the scenario itself is dangerously possible. 

Here’s why: In 1979 the United Nations adopted “The Convention to Eliminate all Forms of Discrimination Against Women” which was then signed by President Jimmy Carter. Called CEDAW, it has never been ratified by the U.S. Senate and has gathered dust for over 20 years -- until now.

Back from the grave, CEDAW was approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in July and is heading for a full vote of the Senate, and for possible ratification.

CEDAW is a horrible treaty with a marvelous name.  It is a litany of feminist and socialist demands that offers nothing to American women – the freest, luckiest, healthiest women on Earth – but that imposes a new imperialism on an unwitting world.  CEDAW wants quotas for everyone and everything; it wants government wage setting; it wants government-run childcare and it wants every child and baby signed up, and of course, it wants every Mommy at work. 

CEDAW hates “discrimination,” which it defines as “any distinction on the basis of sex” in “any … field,” and “by any person, organization or enterprise.”  Any organization?  Any field?  How about Cub Scouts, Little League, Army Rangers, the NFL, the Rainbow Girls or the Radio City Rocketts? 

CEDAW hates “stereotypes” and aims to “modify the…conduct of men and women with a view to achieving the elimination of…all…practices…based on…stereotyped roles of men and women.”  And the stereotype that CEDAW most despises is motherhood, which, as one critic observed, is treated as “an arbitrary designation rather than a fact of life.”  Thus Belarus received a CEDAW reproach for instituting Mothers Day, as did Croatia and Ireland for placing “emphasis” on mothers.  Slovenia caught disapproval “because less than 30 percent of children under three were in formal daycare.”

Looking after CEDAW compliance is The CEDAW Committee, a group of self-selected “experts” from various countries including China, Iraq, Cuba, Libya and Saudi Arabia.  Signatories must “report” to The Committee, which will then pronounce.  The Committee loves to browbeat democracies while treading softly on truly offending totalitarian states that will pay it little attention.  Therefore, while a woman is sentenced to stoning in Nigeria, and while 15 Saudi Arabian schoolgirls are made to perish in a burning building for lack of approved attire, The Committee wants to know if Danish fathers are doing enough housework.

All this matters very much when one remembers Article VI of our Constitution:  “All treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the Unites States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every state shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.”  With CEDAW, the federal government is obliged to take over state family, property and education laws.  Do the states want to abrogate divorce, marriage, child custody, property and education decisions to Washington without being consulted?  No U.S. Senator was elected to arrange that!

Never mind, say backers, the treaty can simply be ratified with “reservations, declarations and understandings” – or RUDs – designed to make sure that CEDAW must not do what it does.  Putting aside that RUDs simply validate CEDAW’s threats, we run into CEDAW Article 28, which forbids “reservations incompatible with the object and purpose of the…Convention.”  By the time we put together enough RUDs to protect our laws, there will be nothing left to ratify but the treaty’s title.

America needs neither to verify nor improve its civil liberties through CEDAW.  But it is sad to see Third World delegates place their hopes in a mechanism that has not – will not – rescue women from true abuse and oppression.  The women of Afghanistan know it best: it was the U.S. military and not CEDAW that liberated them from the Taliban.

America will go on promoting and protecting human rights.  Meanwhile, it will take 67 Senators to sell out our states and country for CEDAW, and only 34 to stop them.  We’re pulling for the 34.