they were denounced.[1] Patriarchy, at least as old as most marriage systems, defended as being based on biological fact and which was supported by many a religious leader, is no longer accepted as the norm, at least in large parts of the world. Severe chastisement of women and children was tolerated by family law and international legal instruments then, but is today considered intolerable.[2] Similarly, though many of the values of family life have remained constant, both the family and the law relating to the family have been utterly transformed.
[103]The decision of the United Nations Human Rights Committee is clearly distinguishable. The Committee held that there was no provision in the ICCPR which forbade discrimination on sexual orientation. This is a far cry from declaring that the ICCPR forbids the recognition of same-sex marriages and seals off same-sex couples from participating in marriage or establishing families. Even more directly to the point, in contradistinction to the ICCPR, our Constitution explicitly proclaims the anti-discriminatory right which was held to lack support from the text of the ICCPR. Indeed, discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation is expressly stated by our Constitution to be presumptively unfair.
- ↑ Similarly, the rights to a fair trial, workers' rights, language rights and the rights of migrants and minorities, to mention but a few, have all expanded enormously since then. Though the language of the instruments proclaiming these rights might be the same, the significance and impact of the words used is vastly different. Free speech rights and rights of movement have advanced in equal measure. Punishments that had been regarded as self-evidently necessary for centuries are now forbidden as barbarous.
- ↑ The list of changes is endless. The fact that environmental rights and disability rights were not expressly mentioned in the Declaration did not mean that they were to be treated as excluded from, or somehow hostile, to the specified rights. What was considered free, fair, dignified or equal then, is a far cry from what would be accepted as such today.
