ANALYSIS/OPINION:

The United Nations‘ special rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief said in a report presented to the Human Rights Council that faith must not be used to justify violence or discrimination, and that when religion seems to provoke acts of violence or discrimination — particularly against women and gays and transgenders — then the global body’s own equal rights’ protections must take priority over the religious teachings.

On the one hand, that’s a no-duh remark. Discrimination in all its forms is bad. So is violence. We get it. On the other hand, though — and this is where it gets dicey — this is the United Nations‘ way of setting government over religion, of prioritizing government over God.

Read carefully. Think critically. This is a U.N. step toward supplanting the religions of the world.

“States have an obligation to guarantee to everyone, including women, girls and LGBT+ people, an equal right to freedom of religion or belief, including by creating an enabling environment where pluralist and progressive self-understandings can manifest,” said Special Rapporteur Ahmad Shaheed, in his annual report, LifeSiteNews wrote.

That’s the no-duh.

Here comes the dicey.

From the U.N.’s news desk: “In his report, the UN expert urges States to repeal gender-based discrimination laws, including those enacted with reference to religious considerations that criminalize adultery; criminalize persons on the basis of their actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity; criminalize abortion in all cases; and facilitate religious practices that violate human rights.”

Shaheed didn’t call out religions by name. But that in itself is problematic.

After all, it’s Islam that breeds violence; Islam that sets women as second-class citizens — or even lower, below the dogs; Islam that tosses gays off rooftops; Islam that rewards suicide bombing martyrs-slash-murderers for Allah with virgins in heaven.

If the goal of the United Nations is to address the root causes of violence and discrimination as it pertains to religion, then the better path toward truth and effectiveness would be to speak boldly and clearly on the dangers of politicized Islam, and the fuzzy boundaries that separate the so-called religion of Islam from the radicalized political beliefs of Islam. And that’s “boundaries” in quotation marks.

But if the goal of the United Nations is to draw moral equivalences between the religions of the world, as if Christianity is Hinduism is Islam is Wiccan and so forth — and then make the case that all are equally prone to discriminate and and subjugate and further acts of brutality and violence — well then, congrats to the special rapporteur.

Lumping the world’s religions together is a tool of confusion and deception that allows the global body to shake its scolding finger in the general direction of “religion,” instead of at the real sources of religious intolerance and violence.

It also subtly casts Christian teachings about the sin of homosexuality, the sin of adultery, and the satanic nature of creating chaos with the God-ordained definition of family as akin to, say, Islam’s open persecution of gays, or Islam’s brutal public punishments of women for adultery.

And when the messaging is complete, when the message of Christianity equals Islam equals any other religion of the world is imprinted on enough mindsets, then watch and see: There will come the United Nations with the solution for all this religion-based discrimination and intolerance and murder and mayhem — government regulation of religion.

Government, over religion.

It’s historical truth that socialists, communists, tyrants, despots and autocrats seek worship of government, not God; seek a secularized society in order to exert greater influence and seize greater control. And if you can’t wipe out religion, what better way to make religion irrelevant than by casting all the religions as the same? The better to break the faith, my dear.

If any government had a vested interest in plowing forth a secularized society, it’s the power-hungry bloated elites of the United Nations.

Beware the “wolves in sheep’s clothing,” the Bible teaches. Beware the United Nations‘ teachings on religions.

• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter by clicking HERE.