Biden State Dept. Engaging in ‘Ideological Colonialism’ with Worldwide LGBT Agenda: Report

President Joe Biden ramped up his LGBT advocacy this week with the largest celebration of Pride Month in White House history. Biden reiterated his unabashed support of the LGBT community, stating the community brings “hope and light” to society, and that its members “set an example for the nation and, quite frankly, for the world.”

According to a new Family Research Council white paper, Biden is certainly the LGBT community’s biggest cheerleader around the world. “The [Biden] administration has systematically elevated the importance of LGBT ideology in American foreign policy,” reads the report, “Exporting LGBT Ideology: The Biden Administration’s Foreign Policy Priority.” The paper, authored by Arielle Del Turco and Chris Gacek, notes the administration’s activist stance is reflected in the use of the “resources and platform of the U.S. government to promote LGBT policies abroad.”

“The mark of this ideological push is widespread, and the harms will be as well,” writes Del Turco, director of the FRC’s Center for Religious Liberty, and Gacek, director of Regulatory Affairs at FRC. “The Biden administration is choosing to use the institutions and mechanisms of U.S. foreign policy to promote sexual orientation and gender identity as human rights issues,” the paper notes.

“President Biden and his State Department are using your tax dollars to force this ideology on poor nations who are desperate for American aid dollars,” FRC President Tony Perkins said June 13, accusing the Biden administration of “engaging in cultural imperialism against countries that have no interest in flying the Pride Flag or redefining marriage or human sexuality.”

More often than not, these nations have traditional values, Perkins stressed, noting this blatant advocacy “flies in the face of what they believe and what they want for their children and for their country.”

An FRC assessment of the websites and social media platforms of U.S. embassies revealed the State Department actively advocates LGBT ideology. “In 2022 at least 132 U.S. embassies released Pride Month statements via social media or their website, at least 99 U.S. embassies flew Pride or Progress flags, and at least 49 embassies had staffers who participated in Pride parades,” according to the report.

In an appearance on “Washington Watch,” Del Turco said the contrast between the State Department under Biden and former President Trump is sharp. Under Trump, the State Department was focused on pushing tenets of religious freedom around the world, including speaking up for those being persecuted for their faith, she noted. “After President Biden came into office, I just saw all of that fall off,” Del Turco said, noting the emphasis flipped to pushing LGBT policies on countries around the world who have no interest in it.

The Biden administration is using the nation’s human rights apparatus to condemn other countries that have not embraced pro-LGBT policies like marriage and legal gender recognition, Del Turco said. “[The U.S. government] is being hypocritical by taking many of these policies the [U.S.] adopted very recently,” she added, noting different cultures do not appreciate this “ideological colonialism.”

Del Turco suggested the Biden administration is using these nations’ reliance on America’s foreign assistance as leverage “to coerce countries around the world to start adopting some of these radical LGBT policies.” In their research, she and the study’s co-author, Chris Gacek, discovered a “systematic effort to infect all aspects of American foreign policy with LGBT policies.”

There are policies equally offensive to many people of faith that might rival LGBT activism for the top spot in the Biden administration’s agenda, the pair acknowledged, citing the promotion of abortion and population control.

The white paper states it was during the Obama administration that LGBT principles began to be woven into America’s foreign diplomacy. The report notes that in December 2011, then-President Barack Obama issued a memorandum to cabinet and agency heads entitled, “International Initiatives to Advance the Human Rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Persons.” The memo begins with this statement: “The struggle to end discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons is a global challenge, and one that is central to promoting human rights.”

According to Del Turco and Gacek, the presidential memorandum required all U.S. agencies working overseas “to ensure that U.S. diplomacy and foreign assistance promote and protect the human rights of LGBT persons.” The duo’s groundbreaking report provides ample proof that “LGBT rights are at the pinnacle of the administration’s State Department agenda.”

The report details the State Department’s seeming obsession with the promotion of LGBT ideology, noting at least nearly 50 embassies had staffers participate in Pride parades or marches last year, while U.S. embassies hosted Pride receptions, roundtable discussions, LGBT movie nights, or webinars with local LGBT activists. On National Coming Out Day, the Deputy Chief of Mission to the U.S. embassy in Luxembourg made a video telling his own coming out story. The U.S. embassy in India promoted a video of a young transgender-identifying activist.

As further evidence of the State Department’s commitment to promote LGBT ideology in other nations, Secretary of State Antony Blinken held a “first-of-its-kind” briefing to LGBT reporters in June 2022, telling the group he had consistently raised concerns about human rights conditions for LGBT-identifying people with Saudi diplomats.

Since Obama’s actions — and through each of the three most recent presidential administrations — the research reveals “permanent foreign policy bureaucracies appear to have become committed to advancing LGBT ideology and other social justice agendas under the guise of development and human rights policy.”

Yet the study’s authors state the Biden administration ramped up the promotion of the ideology. In issuing a memorandum entitled, “Advancing the Human Rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex Persons Around the World” in February soon after his inauguration,” President Joe Biden raised the prominence of the issue by tying it to “national security.”

The authors summarize the memorandum: “It shall be the policy of the United States to pursue an end to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or sex characteristics, and to lead by the power of our example in the cause of advancing the human rights of LGBTQI+ persons around the world.”

More recently, the U.S. State Department applauded its own work in “promoting and protecting the human rights of LGBTQI+ people around the world through our diplomacy and foreign assistance” by releasing a 130-page document in April 2022, the white paper notes. The report, which the State Department labeled as a “first of its kind progress report,” acknowledged the U.S. government’s efforts to date, but insisted more needed to be done in this area: “It is clear we must be doing more, and we will continue to strive for additional progress.”

Del Turco told Perkins that she and Gacek know pro-family activists who are very disheartened when they see the U.S. embassy participating in Pride marches in their countries. “It sends a message that the strongest country in the world is marching through their capital city and supporting an agenda that condemns their laws,” she continued.

“It’s really, really condescending,” Del Turco lamented.

They note the push by the Biden administration is much more than an indication of the president’s concern for the rights of citizens in other nations: “LGBT-identifying persons are already, rightly, protected by international human rights treaties by virtue of their personhood, not their sexual orientation or gender identity. 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.”

AUTHOR

K.D. Hastings

K.D. Hastings and his family live in the beautiful hills of Middle Tennessee. He has been engaged in the evangelical world as a communicator since 1994.

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