Blinken’s denunciation was unfair and misleading. What he repudiated was a phantom report, one that was never written, whose critics shouted it down even before its authors were appointed, and had little to do with the report that actually emerged. The letters LGBTQ are not to be found in its pages; abortion is not discussed; natural law is not insisted upon; and the hierarchy that is proposed is mainly a prioritization of rights that are binding in all places and circumstances over those that are tailored more flexibly to circumstance and locale.
. . .
What the commission’s report recommends may be thought of as a strengthening of the human rights magisterium. With respect to the vertical dimension, while the report does not require that human rights be viewed as divinely bestowed, it does hold that they are “pre-political,” “inherent in human beings” and “inalienable,” the eponymous term derived from the U.S. Declaration of Independence. Human rights do not exis