The Biden administration’s promotion of LGBTQ ideology in its foreign policy risks alienating countries whose moral positions on the issue differ from those of the U.S., the Family Research Council says in an analysis to be released Tuesday.
“Pushing LGBT-specific policies around the world is a coercive attempt to change foreign cultures and laws from afar and displaces human rights like religious freedom,” the evangelical research group says in its analysis.
The “Exporting Pride” report notes that the U.S. Agency for International Development will spend $2.6 billion “for foreign assistance programs that promote gender equity and equality worldwide,” according to a 2022 USAID news release. The program will pay “particular attention to those who face multiple forms of discrimination, including women and girls in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI+) community.”
In addition, USAID released in May a “predecisional draft” of an LGBTQI+ Inclusive Development Policy that “recommits to its staff, local partners, the international community, other development agencies, and program participants around the world that LGBTQI+ individuals are a vital force in the work we do.”
The Family Research Council analysis also notes that American diplomatic outposts have increased their expressions of support for overseas LGBTQ communities.
Last year, 126 embassies released Pride Month statements, U.S. outposts in 97 countries displayed rainbow-themed Pride or Progress flags, and staff members at 48 embassies participated in Pride parades, the analysis states.
“The implicit message here is: ‘Your policies are wrong’ … ‘You’re not sufficiently embracing LGBT ideology,” said Arielle Del Turco, director of the council’s Center for Religious Liberty. “And these countries shouldn’t be forced to accept that as a part of U.S. foreign policy, our international relations shouldn’t be contingent on these radical LGBT policies.”
The Family Research Council provided an advance copy of its analysis exclusively to The Washington Times.
A State Department spokesperson emailed a comment about the analysis to The Times: “America’s strength is found in its diversity. America is stronger, at home and around the world, when it is inclusive. Recognizing that each country context is different, U.S. embassies and consulates develop individual plans to raise awareness of violence, human rights abuses, and discrimination targeting LGBTQI+ persons, including appropriate exterior displays.”
The Times has reached out to USAID for comment.
The Family Research Council said the Biden administration’s LGBTQ advocacy abroad comes at the expense of other human rights issues. The group provided an advance copy of its analysis exclusively to The Washington Times.
“We’ve seen tens of thousands of Christians being murdered for their Christian identity in Nigeria in recent years, and we don’t hear a peep about that from the Biden administration. We hear less and less about the Uighur Muslim Uyghurs who are being detained by the tens of thousands in western China. I don’t hear very much about that at the State Department,” Ms. Del Turco said.
The U.S. Embassy in India is “promoting transgenderism” on its social media accounts, part of a “partisan and coercive” focus “that the American people aren’t even united on,” she added.
She also cited a recent conversation with “an ambassador from Latin America” whose nation “is very much in need of aid.” The diplomat told her that “increasingly under President Biden the aid that he was being offered [was] not to address the very immediate needs of his country for food for security, [but is] focused on these social issues of LGBT ideology,” Ms. Del Turco said.
Surveying the breadth of U.S. advocacy on the topic worldwide, Chris Gacek, the group’s senior fellow for regulatory affairs, said: “I thought it was kind of breathtaking, the extent to which they know how to use the levers of the government to push something that they want to do.”
“I think it’s a very aggressive ideological foreign policy, and I think [the] American people should know about that, especially when they made these claims when they were running against [former President Donald] Trump that they were the adults, they were going to return us to normality,” Mr. Gacek said.
The Family Research Council analysis calls on members of Congress “to act to minimize the damage to American interests posed by President Biden’s ideological colonialism.”
The organization said its report will be available Tuesday at www.frc.org/ExportingPride.
Source:Washington Times
