It was very easy to believe last week that gay people around the world had been pushed even closer to a bloody end. The UN general assembly voted to remove the mention of killings based on sexual orientation from a resolution condemning arbitrary and extrajudicial executions.

"This is a shameful day in United Nations history," gay rights activist Peter Tatchell said. "It gives a de facto green light to the on-going murder of LGBT people by homophobic regimes, death squads and vigilantes."

But abhorrent as this amendment was – and I condemn it utterly – it is questionable whether it will actually make things worse on the ground. Although the "sexual orientation" wording had been in place for years until this U-turn, many governments did nothing as the screams of gay people being butchered echoed all around. Furthermore, gay people are still theoretically included under the resolution's condemnation of killing for "discriminatory reasons on any basis".

No, there are deeper problems here that undermine the integrity of the UN and quell optimism about the organisation's ability to secure positive change.

First, there is a delicate diplomatic dance taking place between member states, and few want to disrupt it, whatever the cost. The motion to delete "sexual orientation" was introduced by Morocco and Mali "on behalf of African and Islamic nations" (according to Reuters).

As Amnesty International explains: "The repression that gay and lesbian people face is often passionately defended by governments or individuals in the name of religion, culture, morality or public health ... Same-sex relations are dubbed 'un-Christian', 'un-African', 'un-Islamic', or a 'bourgeois decadence'."

Britain and the US condemned the motion, and voted against it, along with 68 other countries (the US abstained from the final vote for the resolution). But, it would seem, another 79 countries would rather anoint other members' cultural sensitivities – by which I mean bigotry, prejudice and hate – than try to protect vulnerable citizens. South Africa, for example, voted for the amendment despite its proud history as the first country to outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Thus, the UN resembles a middle-class 1970s dinner party. When a guest makes a joke about "coons" everyone laughs nervously and looks down at their prawn cocktail.

Except that this isn't an offensive joke, it's life and death being discussed. The upholstered niceties of a UN meeting are so removed from the routine reality – a gay person's skull being crushed into the mud to a soundtrack of frenzied chants – that the only sound we can hear is the chinking of cutlery.

But it's not just cowardice and "cultural respect" taken to its unethical extreme here. Until there are some common beliefs agreed on between member states over the nature of homosexuality, any hope for progressive dialogue is severely impaired.

Many member states don't recognise homosexuality as a concept or an identity. The belief, too, that homosexuality is a western "problem" or "disease" is widespread. More endemic, particularly in Africa and the Middle East, is the notion that being gay is a choice. This is why American "reparative therapists" – those who believe homosexuality is a "broken" sexuality that can be "cured" by prayer and therapy – have been welcomed in Uganda and Kenya to whip up anti-gay sentiment.

Even basic terms are contentious. In 2003, at the UN human rights commission, gay rights were addressed for the first time when Brazil proposed a motion expressing "deep concern at the occurrence of violations of human rights in the world against persons on the grounds of their sexual orientation". Five Muslim countries blocked it. One of them, Pakistan, refused to even accept the basic terminology. Its ambassador, Shaukat Umer, said that the correct term was not "sexual orientation" but "sexual disorientation".

But it is the UN that is disorientated. It is punch drunk and mute, caught between appeasing its members, speaking out against intolerance and thrashing out some common principles that will publicly assert the human rights of a persecuted minority. Is this the best it can do?