Ongs Hat Road, Pemberton, New Jersey
Moorish Orthodox Church in America:
The Diocese of New Jersey
Sixth Day After the Feast of Q'iyamat August 14, 2001
Beloved Sisters and Brothers,
We write to you today as Bishop of the Diocese of Ong's Hat, New Jersey, of the Moorish Orthodox Church in America, as your fellow Moor, as a Servant of the Servants of Righteousness, and for those among you who are Americans or living in this country, as your fellow-citizen, resident and brother.
It has come to our attention that the White House has proposed Mr. John M. Klink (formerly an advisor to the Permanent Mission of the Holy See to the United Nations) for confirmation as Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration. The purpose of this letter is to urge you, in the most emphatic terms possible, to oppose Mr. Klink's nomination to and confirmation in that position.
A very substantial portion of the responsibilities of the office for which Mr. Klink is proposed is the administration of a budget in excess of US$750,000,000, intended to initiate and augment reproductive health services for refugees.
It should be noted that Mr. Klink represented the interests of the Holy See (that is to say, the Vatican City State and - more particularly - the ecclesiastical government of the Roman Catholic Church) on the UNICEF Executive Board from 1988 through 1999 and served as the Vatican's leading advocate when the Vatican City State de-funded UNICEF in 1996 owing to the fact that the children's charity was one of several United Nations agencies that sponsored the publication of a manual on emergency medical operations for refugee populations that mentioned emergency contraception as an appropriate intervention for women who had been raped and had requested the procedure.
As you may be aware, this issue was of particular topicality at the time because of the incidence of rape on a massive scale occurring in the territories comprising the former Yugoslavia. Mr. Klink was also the chief negotiator on the Vatican delegations to the Untied Nations conference on Environment & Development (1992), the United Nations conference on Population and Development (1994) and the United Nations fourth World Conference on Women (1995). In these roles, he continually worked to oppose contraception (including the use of condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS, voluntary sterilization, comprehensive sexuality education, and access to safe, legal abortion services. In each of the aforecited conferences, Mr. Klink was the premier mover of the Vatican's obstructionist maneuvering where urgently needed consensus actions were delayed by his and the Holy See's insistent linking of the term "family planning" to abortion. It would be both a tragedy as well as wildly inappropriate for the United States of America, once a bastion of religious liberty and individual freedom in a world benighted by tyranny and obscurantism, to appoint such an individual whose career has been built on nothing other than service to his own religious tradition's narrow, cultic, anti-choice and anti-woman agenda - to occupy a position of such public trust.
We emphatically call upon all of you - both those who are numbered among the faithful of the Diocese as well as our non-Moorish Orthodox sisters and brothers committed to a society free of religious coercion and based upon equality, human rights and individual liberty to communicate with the White House and with your representatives in Congress urging them to work against this potentially disastrous appointment.
Your Congressional representatives may be contacted through the website maintained at www.congress.org, or that of www.house.gov, or by www.visi.com. Alternately, for contact information, please contact your local town, city or county offices.
We ask also that you pray for those refugees who find themselves in need, for the victims of rape and gender oppression, for those guilty of the sins of oppression and tyranny, and for those everywhere who hunger and thirst for freedom, safety and justice. In the Service of Holiness,
+ Sotemohk - Bishop, Diocese of New Jersey of the Moorish Orthodox Church in America
