Global Equality Today: March 2024

As we write here in Washington, D.C., spring has arrived. Clocks have sprung forward, cherry blossoms have just peaked, and pollen allergies are back with a vengeance.

Temperatures aren’t the only thing heating up, though. While it’s only March, we’re effectively moving onto the general election season months before the summer conventions following barely contested primary races in both major parties.

Any election year offers distinct advocacy challenges, but never have we seen one so fraught as this year, where Congress is paralyzed by the extraordinary dysfunction within the House Republican majority. One example of the extremist-driven paralysis comes in the continuing failure to pass a five-year “clean” reauthorization of PEPFAR, despite the program’s extraordinary success and its twenty-year record of bipartisan support. Fortunately, Congress did just approve a clean, one-year extension of the program in its late-night budget deal. That’s not ideal for program management, but we did manage to keep some dangerous riders out of PEPFAR that would have undermined its effectiveness — and its ability to serve LGBTQI+ communities abroad. 

But we continue to work with our allies in the executive branch and on the Hill to promote LGBTQI+ human rights wherever possible. Just this month, CGE members successfully lobbied Congressional allies to strip more than 50 anti-LGBTQI+ riders from the Appropriations bill. The anti-LGBTQI+ forces in Congress did manage to attach one unfortunate provision that is intended to prevent embassies from flying Pride flags during Pride celebrations overseas. But CGE member Human Rights Campaign summed up the situation well, noting in a press release that it was one of the least-harmful of all of the anti-LGBTQI+ provisions and that it does not in any way prevent embassies from actually celebrating Pride.

Indeed, with this new limitation, we challenge the majority of U.S. embassies that do celebrate Pride around the world to rethink their celebrations to move beyond flag-waving events to gatherings designed to honor and support the community in creative new ways. For its part, a White House statement promised to work with Congress to repeal the policy. CGE and our members will remain vigilant, as no doubt, hard-right members of Congress will continue to try inserting anti-LGBTQI+ poison pills into other bills as this increasingly dysfunctional Congress wraps up its pre-election agenda.

PROJECT 2025, LGBTQI+ HUMAN RIGHTS, AND THE AUTHORITARIAN THREAT

It is no exaggeration to say that democracy is on the ballot in 2024, in the United States and around the world. Two billion people — about half of the world’s adult population — will go to the polls this year. Maria Ressa, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning journalist from the Philippines and author of How To Stand Up to a Dictator, has warned that in all likelihood, “2024 will be the year that democracy falls off the cliff.”

Very dramatic words to be sure, but in Indonesia, a former general once banned from the United States for alleged human rights abuses has already won the February presidential election. In Russia, Vladimir Putin used sham polls to further tighten his grasp on power. In India, Narendra Modi, the Hindu nationalist prime minister, is widely expected to win a third term in this spring’s elections. Other key elections coming this year include those taking place in Mexico, South Africa, South Korea, Belgium, Ghana, the European Union, and, potentially, the United Kingdom.

In an op-ed last month, Maria Sjödin, Executive Director of Outright, one of CGE’s member organizations, outlined the implications of these elections for LGBTQI+ people, noting the weaponization of homophobia and transphobia in the campaigns in Russia, Ghana, and South Africa, among other countries.

This weaponization is, of course, front and center in this year’s U.S. presidential, Congressional, and local elections. At CGE, we are working hard to draw attention to Project 2025.

If you haven’t yet heard, Project 2025 is what the Heritage Foundation and its partners are innocuously pitching as “the plan for the next conservative President” of the United States. But as our colleagues at the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism explain far more accurately, “Project 2025 is an authoritarian roadmap to dismantling a thriving, inclusive democracy for all.”

We strongly encourage you to read our blog on Project 2025, and to share it, along with our fact sheet on the particular anti-LGBTQI+ planks of the plan. Additionally, check out Beirne Roose-Snyder, CGE’s Senior Policy Fellow, talking about Project 2025 on the rePROs Fight Back podcast.

Beyond demonizing LGBTQI+ people and looking to eliminate the fundamental human rights of the community, Project 2025 takes aim at numerous rights, populations, programs, and principles: sexual and reproductive health and rights, racial equity, climate justice and environmental policy, public education, so-called “wokeness” in the military, separation of church and state, and much more.

Let’s not mince words: Project 2025’s targeting of LGBTQI+ people and of sexual and reproductive health and rights is inseparable from its overarching goal of dismantling democracy and capturing the U.S. federal government. It is no exaggeration to describe Project 2025’s mandate as eliminationist, as it seeks to erase LGBTQI+ people from public life, from social protections, and from democratic citizenship altogether.

The Republican House majority has certainly demonstrated its willingness to pursue such an eliminationist agenda, as have anti-LGBTQI+ state legislators around the country. The one partial victory they achieved in the appropriations battle was enacting a ban on flying the rainbow flag on the exterior of U.S. embassies — though, as already noted, that measure does not limit embassies organizing Pride events or otherwise supporting in-country LGBTQI+ communities. But this provision also speaks to how authoritarians, at home and around the globe, have weaponized the rainbow flag in their war on democracy and the rule of law.

Over the months to come, we’ll have much, much more to say about Project 2025 and about the highly coordinated, very well-funded anti-rights movement that is targeting LGBTQI+ rights as a wedge for its broader assault on democracy, civil society, and human rights.

LGBTQI+ REFUGEES & ASYLUM SEEKERS

In February, House Republicans defeated the border security deal negotiated between the White House and a bipartisan group of Senators. While there were certainly some positive measures in the deal, from increased staffing to process asylum claims to urgently needed assistance for Ukraine, and while House Republicans rejected the deal for not being sufficiently anti-immigrant, we expressed our fundamental opposition to any changes to immigration policy that would undermine the basic human right to seek asylum and that certainly would be disastrous for LGBTQI+ refugees and asylum seekers.

We want to flag two related pieces from CGE members. First, in an op-ed in The Advocate, Immigration Equality issued its own powerful rebuke to the deal, explaining why it would be lethal for LGBTQI+ asylum seekers. Second, Human Rights First reported on a trip to the U.S.-Mexico border, sharing the stories of refugees directly harmed by U.S. policies, including that of an LGBTQ+ refugee from Ghana terrified of being forced to return — and this was even before the passage of the horrific anti-LGBTQI+ law by the Ghanaian Parliament in late February.

LGBTQI+ HUMAN RIGHTS UNDER THREAT AROUND THE WORLD

Ghana is one of all too many countries where homophobic and transphobic politicians, backed by anti-rights actors from the United States, are pushing discriminatory, hate-fueled legislation to deny even the most basic rights of citizenship to LGBTQI+ people. These laws, whether proposed or actually passed and enacted, all increase anti-LGBTQI+ stigma and violence.

CGE is coordinating closely with activists in Ghana urging President Akufo-Addo to veto the draconian bill passed by Parliament in February; with movement leaders in Uganda petitioning for the Supreme Court there to overturn last year’s Anti-Homosexuality Act; and with advocates in Kenya and elsewhere in Africa working hard to prevent passage of similar bills in their own country.

We also continue to lobby our partners in the U.S. government, at the World Bank, and in like-minded countries to keep up the pressure and not let homophobic and transphobic politicians think they can get away with restricting the fundamental human rights of a vulnerable community. CGE especially appreciates the termination of Uganda’s AGOA status and calls for Ghana’s status to be revoked as well should the new law go into effect. We were also very pleased to see the Treasury Department levy sanctions against the director of Uganda’s prison system:

“Members of vulnerable groups, including government critics and members of Uganda’s LGBTQI+ community, have been beaten and held without access to legal counsel; for example, in a 2020 case, the UPS [Uganda Prisons Systems] denied a group of LGBTQI+ persons access to their lawyers and members of the group reportedly endured physical abuse, including a forced anal examination and scalding.”

This is only the second-known use of Global Magnitsky Act sanctions against a perpetrator for committing human rights violations against LGBTQI+ people, a strategy CGE has long urged Treasury to deploy. We likewise applaud the denial of a visa to Ugandan MP Sarah Opendi (and apparently to many other Ugandan MPs), who called for the castration of gay men and who has been one of the leading supporters of the Anti-Homosexuality Act.

For a deeper dive into the homophobic and transphobic campaigns across the Continent, we encourage you to read our think piece, “Ubuntu for LGBTQI+ Africans,” which argues:

The proliferation of anti-LGBTQI+ laws in Africa constitutes a perilous trend that imperils the lives and freedoms of countless individuals, placing the continent at a disadvantage. These laws contravene fundamental human rights principles, while also undermining democracy and the rule of law. It is imperative that African governments take decisive action to repeal these harmful and discriminatory laws while actively promoting equality and human rights for all.

Meanwhile, Russia continues to push the template for authoritarian regimes using eliminationist tactics as a tool promote the broader suppression of dissent and independent civil society. Building upon the 2013 and 2022 so-called “propaganda” laws, the Russian Supreme Court declared “the international LGBT movement” to be “an extremist organization,” thus conflating any pro-LGBTQI+ statements with terrorism. Already, one woman has been jailed for wearing rainbow earrings under the new court ruling, and earlier in March, two employees of a gay bar were charged with “extremism” for organizing and hosting drag shows. CGE is continuing to partner with Russian LGBTQI+ activists to draw attention to the crisis facing the country’s queer community, and we are urging U.S. government partners to use all tools possible to prevent copycat legislation in other countries as was the case for the “propaganda” laws.

In Central Asia, the Biden Administration is seeking to develop closer security partnerships and economic relationships with the five former Soviet republics strategically located between Russia, China, and Afghanistan. As it does so, we continue to press our Administration partners to insist that improving the abysmal situation for LGBTQI+ people and for human rights and civil society more broadly in Central Asia must go hand-in-hand with closer trade ties.

THE WAR IN GAZA AND ISRAEL

More than five months since the catastrophic attacks of October 7^th, CGE continues to mourn the pain and suffering from those brutally victimized by Hamas, as well as the Palestinian civilians who have been harmed and killed in the Israeli response. We call out all attacks on civilian populations as grave violations of human rights and humanitarian law.  

We further call on the U.S. government to support an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and Israel, and to support sufficient and unhindered humanitarian corridors to Gaza to prevent greater harm to civilians. We urge the United States to ensure that U.S. military and financial support are not used for the collective, retaliatory punishment of Palestinians, including journalists, children, and other vulnerable groups. We also call on the U.S. government to work for a negotiated release of all the hostages currently in Gaza as an immediate priority. 

CGE Co-Chair Julie Dorf published her own personal reflections on the war, having grown up in a “staunchly Zionist environment,” visiting Israel and Palestine numerous times, and wrestling over the years with anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, pinkwashing, war and oppression, and what justice can look like. We likewise encourage you to share her essay and offer your own observations.

EMBASSY GUIDE

In our fall 2023 newsletter, we spotlighted the updated and expanded edition of CGE’s Accessing U.S. Embassies: A Guide for LGBTQI+ Human Rights Defenders, our resource for helping international partners understand and access U.S. embassies and missions and build and maintain productive working relationships with U.S. diplomatic and development staff around the world. This guide, originally released in English in June, is now also available in Spanish, French, and Arabic as well.

CELEBRATING OUR PARTNERS

To wind down on a happy note: we’ve just celebrated some amazing LBTQ+ activists for International Women’s Day, and we’re preparing to recognize equally remarkable trans and nonbinary advocates for Transgender Day of Visibility later this week.

While the forces pitted against equality and human rights for LGBTQI+ communities are growing stronger and more connected in many regions of the world, we also saw two heartwarming victories for marriage equality in Japan earlier this month. And as CGE member organization Amnesty International noted, “[b]y recognizing that the government’s ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional, these rulings make clear that such discrimination has no place in Japanese society.” Equality, too, is on the march and discrimination has no place in any society, we just have to remember to look for it and celebrate it, even as we fight back against the forces of hate and extremism.

Project 2025: A Clear and Present Danger to Democracy

Click here for CGE’s fact sheet on the dangers Project 2025 poses to LGBTQI+ people.

“The next conservative President must make the institutions of American civil society hard targets for woke culture warriors. This starts with deleting the terms sexual orientation and gender identity (“SOGI”), diversity, equity, and inclusion, gender, gender equality, gender equity, gender awareness, gender-sensitive, abortion, reproductive health, reproductive rights, and any other term used to deprive Americans of their First Amendment rights out of every federal rule, agency regulation, contract, grant, regulation, and piece of legislation that exists.”

Have you heard yet about Project 2025? Developed by the Heritage Foundation in collaboration with more than 100 partners, Project 2025 is innocuously pitched as “the plan for the next conservative President” of the United States.

But the 950+ pages of Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership,” including the anti-LGBTQI+ quote above, represent something far more dangerous and far more comprehensive than a list of policy proposals. As our colleagues at the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism explain, “Project 2025 is an authoritarian roadmap to dismantling a thriving, inclusive democracy for all.”

This is not hyperbole. This is, as Carlos Lozada noted in a recent New York Times op-ed, a plan for “capturing the administrative state, not unmaking it. The main conservative promise here is to wield the state as a tool for concentrating power and entrenching ideology.”

The mainstream media has been slow to pick up on the direct threat Project 2025 poses to American democracy and the rule of law, and especially to LGBTQI+ people, to sexual and reproductive health and rights, and to other marginalized communities. But Lozada’s op-ed and other recent pieces suggests that major outlets are beginning to recognize the existential danger to democracy at hand. Moreover, if recent reports prove accurate, President Biden is preparing to put Project 2025 at the heart of his argument for why Donald Trump cannot be allowed to return to the White House.

Explicitly grounded in far-right Christian nationalism, Project 2025 is a vision for the future of the United States that is profoundly undemocratic. The plan’s authors seek to eviscerate the professional, apolitical civil service, staffing all federal agencies instead with ideological appointees chosen for their loyalty to the President.

Project Democracy outlines seven fundamental tactics used by aspiring authoritarians:

Attempting to politicize independent institutions; Spreading disinformation; Aggrandizing executive power at the expense of checks and balances; Quashing criticism and dissent; Specifically targeting vulnerable or marginalized communities; Working to corrupt elections; and Stoking violence.

All seven tactics appear all throughout 950+ hate-filled pages of the Project 2025 Mandate for Leadership.

The Heritage Foundation and its partners vow to end racial equity efforts and climate change initiatives, implement “Fortress America” hardline immigration laws, and repeal so-called “woke” military policies. They would restrict human rights broadly and pull the United States out of international bodies such as the United Nations.

The Mandate for Leadership’s 950+ pages drip with unrelenting hate and contempt for LGBTQI+ people. Transgender people face particular vitriol from these extremists; this, unfortunately, is no surprise, with Project 2025’s leaders being intimately connected to those state legislators who have introduced more than 400 bills targeting transgender Americans in the first six weeks of 2024 alone.

From the very first page, the Mandate for Leadership equates so-called “transgenderism” with pornography, and all through the document, LGBTQI+ people are treated as deviants, not as Americans, not as stakeholders in their own government. The Project seeks, in its anti-LGBTQI+ and its restrictions on sexual and reproductive autonomy to demonize and penalize all non-traditional families, relying on junk science to back up its absurd claims that the Biden Administration is penalizing heterosexual marriage in favor of LGBTQI+ equity and single motherhood.

Globally, Project 2025 describes USAID’s LGBTQI+-inclusive programs as “bullying,” promises to end the U.S. Refugee Assistance Program that provides life-saving assistance to LGBTQI+ refugees and other refugees from vulnerable populations, and expands anti-LGBTQI+ and anti-reproductive health regulations to global health programs.

It vows to recommit the United States to the anti-abortion Geneva Consensus and the Commission on Unalienable Human Rights, which proposes a hierarchy of human rights elevating religious liberty and the right to private property while excluding LGBTQI+ rights and sexual and reproductive rights altogether.

The Council for Global Equality has published a fact sheet outlining the specific threats to LGBTQI+ human rights promised by Project 2025. Let’s be absolutely clear here: Project 2025’s targeting of LGBTQI+ people and of sexual and reproductive health and rights is inseparable from its overarching goal of dismantling democracy and capturing the U.S. federal government. It is no exaggeration to describe Project 2025’s Mandate as eliminationist, as it seeks to erase LGBTQI+ people from public life, from social protections, and from democratic citizenship altogether.

Last year, the Williams Institute published its report demonstrating a strong correlation between democratic backsliding and attacking LGBTQI+ rights, noting that “anti-LGBTI stigma and policies may contribute to the weakening of democratic norms and institutions [and that] increased persecution of minority groups, including LGBTI people, is itself evidence of democratic backsliding by indicating the erosion of liberal democratic norms of protecting minority rights.”

Project 2025’s dehumanization and exclusion of LGBTQI+ people is not an accident. This is an intentional strategy that aspiring authoritarians make, demonizing vulnerable minority communities as part of seizing political power — and BIPOC and immigrant LGBTQI+ people face even more demonization from the Heritage Foundation and its collaborators.

Let’s also clear that Project 2025 is not a vague wish list for the anti-democratic far right, nor is it intended to be a project that can be reversed by the next election. The assault on LGBTQI+ rights and sexual and reproductive health and rights are the entry points to the permanent capture of the federal government.

This is a very specific, detailed action plan for next year, a map to a journey that’s well underway now. Indeed, Project 2025 is already happening.  It’s happening in Argentina, where the new far-right President, Javier Milei, eliminated the Ministry of Women, Gender, and Diversity immediately after taking office in December. It’s happening in Hungary, where President Viktor Orbán’s successful campaign to strip rights from LGBTQI+ people, women, and immigrants in service of building an “illiberal democracy” is the template for Project 2025. And it’s happening in U.S. states now, passing dozens upon dozens of anti-LGBTQI+ laws — some of which, such as Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law, directly import Orbánism to the United States.

The evidence is piling up — in the House of Representatives, in state legislatures, and at local school boards, as well as around the world—that we must take the anti-rights movement broadly and Project 2025’s backers specifically at their word. They are telling us what they think of us and what they think of pluralistic, representative democracy.

We need to believe them — and at the same time, we must not lose hope. As Beirne Roose-Snyder, CGE’s own Senior Policy Fellow, recently told the rePROs Fight Back podcast, “hopelessness is a tool of oppression,” and the authors of Project 2025 need people to be “tired, hopeless, and passive, to see this as inevitable.”

It is not inevitable. But stopping the far right requires dragging their plans out into the light of day. It requires naming their plans, discussing it with our families, at work, in our faith communities, and beyond. It requires organizing – around national and state elections, to be sure, but also around local school board and judicial races and around protecting the integrity of elections themselves.

It requires coalition work — with voting rights advocates; with media workers and defenders of the free press; with sexual and reproductive health and rights activists; with racial justice, immigrant justice, disability justice, and climate justice organizers; with youth and with the labor movement; and with progressive faith communities.

There is much more to do and much more we could say. We’ll certainly be writing — and doing — plenty more about the clear and present danger that Project 2025, the Mandate for Leadership, the Heritage Foundation and their partners, and the larger anti-rights movement pose to inclusive, representative democracy. For the moment, please share the word, share our fact sheet, and let’s get to work.

Weaponization of the Pride Flag

As we celebrate Human Rights Day on December 10^th, we are happy to see the continuing progress of our movement, as more and more governments, civil society organizations, and everyday citizens understand how LGBTQI+ rights are human rights.

At the same time, however, we are confronting the global rise of authoritarianism, a trend that encompasses regressive leaders from Russia, Uganda, and Egypt to Florida, Texas, and Tennessee. Reactionary officials and activists are attacking LGBTQI+ rights as a wedge to more broadly undermine democracy, civil society, and human rights for all.

Just the other week, the Russian Supreme Court declared the international LGBTQI+ movement to be “extremist.” Amnesty International warned the accompanying blanket ban on LGBTQI+ advocacy risks “far reaching violations of the rights to freedom of association, expression and peaceful assembly, as well as the right to be free from discrimination.”

(caption: Istanbul, Türkiye, June 2013: Nearly 100,000 people attend LGBT Pride in Istanbul’s Taksim Square, marking the largest LGBT pride ever held in the country.)

One alarming and disheartening phenomenon has emerged in this backlash: the weaponization of the rainbow flag by individuals and groups harboring homophobic and transphobic sentiments who perceive the advancement of LGBTQI+ rights as a threat. What has long been a symbol of liberation and pride for the LGBTQI+ community has now also become a target for those who seek to undermine progress in the ongoing struggle for equal rights.

Historically, rainbow flags have represented a myriad of identities, beliefs, and struggles, spanning centuries and encompassing diverse cultures such as Andean indigenous societies, Buddhism, and the peace movement. However, in contemporary society, the rainbow flag predominantly symbolizes love and community within the LGBTQI+ community. Originally conceived as a beacon of hope, unity, and the fight for equality and acceptance, it has grown into a powerful emblem of the LGBTQI+ movement, symbolizing diversity and inclusion.

Regrettably, some individuals and groups have chosen to co-opt and weaponize this symbol of liberation, thereby using the rainbow flag to promote division and discord. This weaponization is rooted in a complex web of fears, primarily stemming from homophobia, transphobia, and broad apprehensions regarding societal change.

A notable victory for LGBTQI+ rights recently occurred in Mauritius when the Indian Ocean nation decriminalized homosexuality. Mauritius is the latest bright spot in this trend, as LGBTQI+ groups in various countries have pursued legal remedies to address violations targeting their community and to repeal archaic colonial-era laws that criminalize their existence and perpetuate discrimination. While some of these legal battles have led to major victories and the reshaping of society, others have triggered severe backlash, unveiling the multifaceted threats the LGBTQI+ community faces.

Simultaneously, an all-encompassing attack on the queer community continues globally through various means, from physical violence, arbitrary arrests, and state-sponsored legislation aimed at curtailing LGBTQI+ rights to a direct assault on queer culture. In many countries, the rainbow flag has been repurposed as a weapon against the LGBTQI+ community. Even the simple yet radical act of raising the rainbow flag in celebration of Pride has incited vicious backlash and violent government crackdowns against the community with deadly consequences.

The poignant case of Sarah Hegazi exemplifies the fragility of LGBTQI+ lives and underscores the deadly consequences that LGBTQI+ individuals face. Her act of raising the rainbow flag in excitement at a 2017 concert in Cairo resulted in her arrest by the Egyptian government on false charges, culminating in a three-month incarceration under horrifying conditions. Although Hegazi was eventually granted asylum in Canada, the emotional and psychological toll was already exacted, ultimately leading to her to take her own life three years later. This heart-wrenching incident serves as a stark reminder of the profound dangers, both immediate and long-term, that LGBTQI+ individuals confront.

At the heart of these issues lie homophobia and transphobia, the irrational fear and hatred of LGBTQI+ individuals. As societal attitudes evolve towards greater acceptance and inclusion, some individuals perceive these changes as a direct threat to their beliefs and values. Social media platforms often serve as conduits for vitriol and derogatory terms such as “alphabet people,” further contributing to the marginalization of the LGBTQI+ community.

Members of the LGBTQI+ community who boldly live their lives openly or have signs of the rainbow on their social media accounts often report harassment online and hate-filled messages from homophobes and transphobes. These hostilities extend to physical violence, including the burning of rainbow flags and the dismantling of queer safe spaces. Murals painted in rainbow colors on behalf of Sarah Hegazi have even been erased or defaced by individuals who take offense at the rainbow flag and harbor disdain for the LGBTQI+ community.

Moreover, politicians worldwide have exploited fear and animosity towards the LGBTQI+ community for political gain. By positioning themselves as defenders of so-called traditional family values, they have deliberately painted the rainbow flag as a symbol of opposition to everything they stand for, artificially creating a dichotomy between “traditional” and “progressive” values. This situation holds immense significance and danger, as it underscores a form of democratic erosion.

The weaponization of the rainbow flag often coincides with efforts to undermine democratic principles, leading to the enactment of anti-LGBTQI+ policies in certain countries, which suppress the rights of LGBTQI+ individuals and curtail freedom of expression, all driven by the fear of expanding LGBTQI+ rights. This trend raises serious human rights concerns, as LGBTQI+ individuals are disproportionately subjected to discrimination, violence, and persecution. The weaponization of the rainbow flag exacerbates an already hostile environment, further endangering their safety and well-being, occasionally resulting in tragic outcomes, as in the case of Sarah Hegazi.

In the United States, a troubling trend has emerged within this year’s appropriation bills in Congress. Virtually every appropriation bill proposed in the House of Representatives has contained a provision that explicitly prohibits the display of the Pride flag at embassies or federal government buildings. A stand-alone bill in Congress, supported by 45 cosponsors, also aims to formalize this prohibition at U.S. government facilities, although it has not received a vote or a hearing and will hopefully die in committee.

Despite these anti-LGBTQI+ legislative proposals, a noteworthy defiance exists among most U.S. embassies worldwide, as they continue to stand in solidarity with democracy and human rights advocates by disregarding Congress’s attempted restrictions and proudly flying the Pride flag every June. However, this situation sends a potentially contradictory message and could begin to have a chilling effect on embassy engagement with LGBTQI+ communities, even if the anti-Pride flag regulations are never enacted into law.

In an additional distressing development, private companies have become targets due to their association with LGBTQI+ content. In Malaysia, the government has banned products deemed as LGBTQI+-related, specifically targeting rainbow-themed Swatch watches, asserting that they are detrimental to morality. Similarly, the government of Saudi Arabia is intensifying its crackdown on rainbow-colored toys and products in shops in the country’s capital.

Furthermore, Netflix and Hulu recently faced cyberattacks perpetrated by a Sudan-based group of hackers identifying themselves as “Anonymous.” These groups harbor not only a vehement aversion to the LGBTQI+ community but also to any manifestation of queer culture. Their objectives, apart from diminishing the community itself, encompass broader political aims to undermine human rights advancements that benefit LGBTQI+ people. Links between these groups and the Russian government’s anti-LGBTQI+ propaganda law and state-backed moral panic have been documented, suggesting a broader pattern of oppression and erosion of LGBTQI+ human rights.

The weaponization of the rainbow flag represents a disconcerting trend that poses not only a threat to LGBTQI+ rights but also to democratic values and human rights at large. This issue, rooted in homophobia and fear of societal change, has far-reaching consequences, culminating in the erosion of democratic principles and the endangerment of LGBTQI+ individuals. Vigilance and advocacy are essential to counter this troubling phenomenon, as it stands at the intersection of prejudice, political manipulation, and human rights abuse. Addressing this multifaceted challenge necessitates a concerted effort from global society to ensure the continued advancement and protection of LGBTQI+ rights, standing as a testament to the enduring struggle for equality and acceptance.

The Pride flag, as a symbol of hope and freedom, not only signifies LGBTIQ+ equality but also reinforces the understanding that LGBTQI+ rights are human rights. As Ambassador Nichols aptly stated in an OpEd in a newspaper in the Bahamas explaining why U.S. embassies fly the Pride flag, the flag is ultimately a symbol of universal, indivisible human rights, and of the diversity of the LGBTQI+ community and of the United States itself.

In moving forward, it is imperative that embassies not only insist on flying the Pride flag but also continue to reach out to support LGBTIQ+ communities actively and meaningfully across the globe. Prioritizing education and empowerment for LGBTIQ+ individuals will foster increased awareness and contribute to greater acceptance and tolerance within society. On Human Rights Day and every day, this commitment reflects a collective stride towards equality, inclusion, and human rights for all.

Trade Relations and Human Rights in Central Asia

This week, Assistant Secretary of State Don Lu is leading a U.S. delegation to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan to discuss security partnerships, economic relations, energy policy, and human rights with the leaders of those countries. This visit follows up on the first-ever “C5+1” summit this past September in New York, when President Biden met with the leaders of the five Central Asian republics on the margins of the United Nations General Assembly.

Back in September, Biden noted the C5+1 countries’ “shared commitment to sovereignty, independence, [and] territorial integrity.” To that end, Biden spotlighted increased U.S. security funding and closer counterterrorism cooperation, a new critical minerals dialogue to ensure the security of the U.S. high-tech industry, and new mechanisms to facilitate U.S. private sector engagement with Central Asia.

The White House readout of the C5+1 meeting with the Central Asian leaders — including Presidents Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev of Kazakhstan and Shavkat Mirziyoev of Uzbekistan — also noted that Biden raised the need to support civil society, women’s empowerment, and disability rights with his counterparts.

It is clear that the United States government and its Central Asian counterparts are in deep, sustained dialogue, with both sides believing that closer ties are mutually beneficial. Given the region’s geostrategic importance at the crossroads of Russia, China, and Afghanistan, Washington is trying hard to woo Central Asia from Moscow’s sphere of influence. In turn, Central Asia wants access to global markets and trade institutions, which requires closer ties with the West. To that end, Senators Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Todd Young (R-IN) have responded to lobbying from the region by introducing legislation to repeal Jackson-Vanik trade restrictions for Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan and grant those nations permanent normal trade relations (PNTR) status.

We appreciate that President Biden, Secretary Lu, and others have referred to the importance of promoting human rights and civil society in Central Asia – including media freedom, women and girls’ empowerment, and people-to-people ties. At the same time, the abysmal state of human rights and the utter lack of free civil society under all five authoritarian regimes in the region must not be ignored. For perspective, Freedom House, in its 2023 Global Freedom Scores, gave Kazakhstan 23 out of 100 possible points, Uzbekistan 12/100, and Tajikistan 7/100.*

For LGBTQI+ Central Asians, the situation is all the more dire. Just this summer, Kyrgyzstan adopted the roadmap written in Russia that links anti-LGBTQI+ politics and restricting civil society when it passed legislation criminalizing the dissemination of LGBTQI+-affirming information aimed at minors. This development parallels the introduction of proposed laws dramatically limiting freedom of speech and association more broadly.

Uzbekistan’s record on LGBTQI+ human rights is particularly poor. While roughly 65 countries continue to criminalize consensual same-sex relations between adults, Uzbekistan is one of a handful of these countries that actively prosecutes its inhabitants under such a law. Gay and bisexual men and transgender women face up to three years in prison under Article 120. Just this week, as the U.S. delegation visited Tashkent, Uzbekistani authorities acknowledged, as part of the U.N. Universal Periodic Review process, that in 2023, at least 27 male-identified persons have been prosecuted under Article 120.

Uzbekistani police continue to use forced anal exams — widely discredited as both forensically useless and a form of torture — to gather “evidence” to prosecute people under Article 120. Those convicted and imprisoned for engaging in same-sex relations then face being subjected to conversion therapy practices to treat the “disorder of homosexuality … to eliminate repeat crimes and offenses.” Additionally, a 2022 ECOM report documented how healthcare authorities shared individuals’ private medical information about HIV testing and treatment with law enforcement, putting LGBTQI+ Uzbekistanis at further risk for conviction under Article 120.

As part of the UPR process, five Equal Rights Coalitions members — Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Montenegro, and Spain — implored Uzbekistan to decriminalize consensual same-sex relations between adults. Likewise, civil society stakeholders echoed the call to repeal Article 120 and issued numerous other recommendations to promote the human rights of LGBTQI+ people in Uzbekistan, including anti-discrimination legislation; an end to forced anal exams; protection of privacy, especially regarding HIV status and treatment; thorough investigation of anti-LGBTQI+ violence and support for survivors of such violence; the decriminalization of HIV transmission; and an end to anti-LGBTQI+ rhetoric from political and religious leaders. To date, Uzbekistan’s government has rebuffed all these recommendations.

While Kazakhstan repealed Soviet-era sodomy laws in the 1990s as part of sweeping post-independence legal reforms, the human rights situation for LGBTQI+ people there is not meaningfully better than in its southern neighbor. Indeed, Feminita, Kazakhstan’s leading feminist and LGBTQI+ organization, has been repeatedly denied registration to organize openly. In 2021, Feminita organized a private discussion in the city of Shymkent, only for their meeting to be broken up by unidentified men who physically assaulted the Feminita activists. In turn, the police responding to the situation interrogated the activists at length, detaining them for eight hours and threatening to charge them with “insulting a government representative” before forcibly driving them back to Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city, “for their own safety.”

As the U.S. State Department itself reported earlier this year, there are no legal protections from anti-LGBTQI+ discrimination in the country, and acts of violence, harassment, and extortion based on sexual orientation or gender identity, though somewhat common, were rarely investigated by the authorities. As in Uzbekistan, LGBTQI+ Kazakhstanis seldom turned to the authorities to report violence against them because they feared hostility, ridicule, and further violence, and because they did not trust law enforcement to safeguard their personal information, thus putting them at risk for losing employment and housing.

ECOM’s recent research corroborated this assessment, documenting several dozen cases of harassment and violence in Kazakhstan. Such cases included parents insulting and attempting to institutionalize their LGBTQI+ adult children; entrapment and blackmail by gangs luring LGBTQI+ persons looking for dates; disclosure of HIV status and discrimination against HIV advocates; and police indifference and open hostility to the survivors of anti-LGBTQI+ assaults and discrimination.

Unsurprisingly, we are skeptical, to say the least, of the commitment to democracy and human rights on the part of the governments of Central Asia. As the momentum for closer trade relations between the United States and Central Asia builds, the U.S. government should use this moment to press human rights concerns, to ask for more than broad promises, even as it offers incentives such as the repeal of Jackson-Vanik restrictions and the promise of PNTR status.

We understand that Jackson-Vanik is the product of another era, a tool originally designed to press Moscow to end its discriminatory limits on emigration by Soviet Jews and other minority groups. Moreover, we support the use of trade or other commercial incentives to promote human rights. But if Jackson-Vanik is indeed lifted, the Biden Administration needs to commit to the robust use of more appropriate human rights tools to address serious human rights violations in the region, including the targeted persecution of LGBTQI+ individuals. This should include Global Magnitsky sanctions against named individuals who target LGBTQI+ persons for arrest and prosecution, including those who order or perform forced anal exams on suspects in clear violation of medical ethics and human rights norms against torture. The Central Asian governments must not get a free pass on human rights on the road to free trade.

* For context, Russia earned 16/100, China 9, Iran 12, and Saudi Arabia 8, while Sweden and Norway scored 100, Canada 98, the United Kingdom 93, and the United States 83.

Global Equality Today (September 2023)

Happy Autumn! (Almost)

True, neither the calendar nor the temperatures in D.C. quite reflect that fall is upon us. But we’re already diving into what will certainly be a very busy season here in Washington. CGE and its 35 member organizations are hard at work engaging our partners in the Administration and on Capitol Hill to ensure that U.S. foreign policy consistently and comprehensively promotes LGBTQI+ human rights around the world.

There are plenty of challenges in front of us, from the possibility of a government shutdown, the PEPFAR reauthorization stalemate, and the distractions of the 2024 election cycle to a flood of viciously anti-LGBTQI+ legislative efforts, not only here in the United States but in dozens of other countries as well.

But we are not approaching our mission from a defensive posture, no matter how well-organized the movement to roll back the human rights of LGBTQI+ people — and democracy and civil society at large — might be. Instead, with sixteen months to go in this first Biden Administration, we are focused on institutionalizing our victories and expanding our pro-human rights agenda:

• Alongside HRC, we are working with our Hill allies calling for the President’s Budget request to include $40 million for the State Department’s Global Equality Fund (GEF) and $30 million for USAID’s Inclusive Development Hub’s Protection of LGBTQI+ Persons in the FY2025 State and Foreign Operations appropriations bills. We are also partnering with numerous allies in the HIV and SRHR (sexual and reproductive health and rights) movements to pass a clean PEPFAR reauthorization, even in the face of unprecedented attacks from the anti-abortion movement.

• CGE — in collaboration with Rainbow Railroad, ORAM, Immigration Equality, and IRAP, all CGE members — is working with the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration to ensure that the Biden Administration’s direct referral and private sponsorship mechanisms for refugees are both fully LGBTQI+-inclusive and fully operational. This includes promoting Rainbow Railroad’s referrals to  the new Welcome Corps program that will allow local groups to sponsor LGBTQI+ refugees to bring them to safety in the United States. (You can read more in our World Refugee Day blog.)

• We are excited by USAID’s release of its revised and expanded LGBTQI+ Inclusive Development Policy, and we are looking forward to collaborating with USAID’s Senior LGBTQI+ Coordinator, Jay Gilliam, and his team to make sure that LGBTQI+ concerns are truly incorporated throughout the Agency’s work. To that end, we’ve added meetings with USAID’s regional and thematic bureaus to our annual meetings with State’s regional bureaus. And we are supporting the development of a new accountability mechanism at USAID to ensure that any violations of this groundbreaking new policy — or any other USAID policies ­— are reported and addressed at the local level.  

• We are working hard with Ugandan activists on the ground and with a global solidarity coalition organizing to overturn the horrific Anti-Homosexuality Act (AHA) assented to by President Museveni in May. The law has a genocidal intent and is already being implemented to disastrous effect. We are simultaneously working with regional colleagues to prevent the passage of similar anti-LGBTQI+ bills in other African countries, including Ghana and Kenya. Likewise, we are monitoring the deteriorating situation in the Middle East, where anti-LGBTQI+ legislation is pending and attacks on the LGBTQI+ communities are escalating, notably in Lebanon and Iraq.

• As part of our work fighting the AHA in Uganda, CGE met with U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai to call for the suspension of Uganda from AGOA, the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which provides preferential trade benefits for qualifying countries. The AHA — the most draconian anti-LGBTQI+ law in the world — clearly contravenes the human rights requirements of the program, as well as the goals and ideals that animate the AGOA trade framework. CGE also has submitted public comments on Uganda, Kenya, and Ghana — in the latter two cases, with the goal of building pressure to scrap proposed anti-LGBTQI+ laws there — and will continue to work with our partners in the Administration and on the Hill to use U.S. trade policy as a tool to promote human rights.

CGE Co-Chairs Julie Dorf and Mark Bromley with U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai, center.

• We will continue to work with U.S., European, and Central Asian partners to push Uzbekistan for full decriminalization of homosexuality and the immediate end to the pervasive human rights violations committed against Uzbekistan’s LGBTQI+ community by state and non-state actors. This spring and summer, CGE and its partners have been meeting regularly with Congressional partners to promote this priority and to oppose rewarding Tashkent with normal trade relations without improving its human rights record. As Senators Murphy and Young introduce legislation to repeal Jackson-Vanik trade restrictions on Uzbekistan and its neighbors, we call on Congress and the Administration to ensure that human rights standards — including the decriminalization of homosexuality — are part of the trade normalization process.

Looking over the last few months, our work has included…

• CGE released an updated and expanded edition of Accessing U.S. Embassies: A Guide for LGBTQI+ Human Rights Defenders, our resource for helping international partners understand and access U.S. embassies and missions and build and maintain productive working relationships with U.S. diplomatic and development staff in around the world. This guide, released in English in June, will soon be available in Spanish, French, and Arabic as well.

• In May, CGE Co-Chair Mark Bromley attended the inaugural meeting of the P7 (for “Pride7”) that brought together LGBTQI+ advocates from the world’s leading industrial democracies to lobby the G7 alliance to promote LGBTQI+ human rights. The P7 meeting, ahead of the full G7 summit in Hiroshima, helped win support for passage of Japan’s first-ever LGBTQI+ rights legislation (as incomplete as the law may be) as well as lay the groundwork for the P7 becoming an officially recognized civil society engagement group attached to the G7.

CGE Co-Chair Mark Bromley joins other advocates at the inaugural meeting of the P7 in Tokyo

• At a June reception, CGE honored former Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) with our Global Equality Award shortly after he left Congress to lead the Rhode Island Foundation. We had the opportunity to talk with Rep. Cicilline about his leadership with the Congressional Equality Caucus and the Foreign Affairs Committee, the progress we’ve made during his dozen years in Congress, and the opportunities we see and the challenges we’re facing. Additionally, Ambassador Ursu Viorel of Moldova spoke powerfully about being the first openly LGBTQI+ Ambassador from a former Soviet republic and his country’s fundamental commitment to democracy and human rights — even as Russia wages war next door in Ukraine.

Top: former Rep. David Cicilline accepts the Global Equality Award

Bottom: Amb. Ursu Viorel of Moldova speaks to the reception

• In May, we spoke with Alexander Voronov, Executive Director of Coming Out, an NGO that provides legal, psychological, and other direct services to Russia’s LGBTQI+ community. Alex spoke about Coming Out’s continuing work, even in the face of the worsening crackdown on dissent in Putin’s Russia following the invasion of Ukraine — a crackdown that forced him to leave the country and function from exile.

• For IDAHOBIT, the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Interphobia, and Transphobia, we welcomed the U.S. government’s rollout of its Interagency Action Plan dedicated to ending so-called “conversion therapy” (CTP) practices around the world. With this plan, the U.S. government has committed itself to the numerous partnerships necessary to stop these abusive practices. This includes working with LGBTQI+ community groups around the world; with like-minded allies and other partner governments; and with faith leaders, educators, professional associations, and other civil society networks. The U.S. government also plans to work to end CTPs at various multilateral fora, including the development banks and international institutions to which the United States is a party, to ensure that no financial or programmatic support, direct or otherwise, goes towards CTPs.

• For Pride in June — knowing how easy it is to focus on the backlash and the battles we’re fighting — we published a list of 23 recent victories in the movement for LGBTQI+ justice and human rights. We also reiterated how Pride marches are both expressions of fundamental rights to democratic participation and tools for promoting inclusivity, visibility, and acceptance. CGE staff also attended the annual State Department and USAID Pride receptions, meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Administrator Samantha Power, respectively.

Co-Chair Julie Dorf and CGE member leaders meet with Secretary of State Blinken, left

• Additionally, at the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, CGE promotes accountability and investments that support LGBTQI+-inclusive development. CGE staff helped organize several World Bank meetings over the summer that ultimately led to the freezing of new investments in Uganda following the adoption of the AHA.

23 Victories to Celebrate for Pride 2023

As Pride Month comes to a close, we thought we’d take a moment to look back at some of the victories we’ve seen in the movement for global LGBTQI+ human rights over the past year:

Decriminalization

1. Five more countries have struck down discriminatory colonial-era laws that criminalized homosexuality, including three Caribbean countries — Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, and St. Kitts and Nevis  — plus Singapore and the Cook Islands.

2. After last year’s historic ruling CEDAW ruling that Sri Lanka breached the rights of pioneering lesbian activist Rosanna Flamer-Caldera, Colombo has taken key steps towards decriminalizing homosexuality in the South Asian island country.

3. To the surprise of many, Pope Francis spoke out against laws criminalizing homosexuality.

Marriage Equality & Family Recognition

4. In December, President Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act after Congress passed the law enshrining the rights to same-sex marriage equality and interracial marriage into law.

5. Just last week, Estonia became the first former Soviet republic to introduce marriage equality. This comes after victories over the past year in Mexico, Cuba, Slovenia, Switzerland,and Andorra extending the equal right to marriage to same-sex couples.

6. Several Asian countries took important steps towards marriage equality this past year —  whether through elections or court rulings — including Japan, South Korea, Thailand, and just as we went to press, Nepal.

7. Other victories for LGBTQI+ families included Taiwan’s legislature approving adoption rights for same-sex parents; Bolivia’s highest court recognizing civil unions; Namibia’s Supreme Court recognizing the rights same-sex couples married abroad; and Nepal’s Supreme Court likewise recognizing the foreign spouse of a Nepali citizen married overseas.

Transgender Rights & Legal Gender Recognition

8. In February, Spain passed a landmark legal gender recognition law allowing transgender people to change their gender marker on official documents based solely on their self-identification. In April, Vietnam took major steps in the same direction.

9. Earlier this month, U.S. federal judges struck down Arkansas’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors and Tennessee’s ban on drag shows on core constitutional grounds. And just yesterday, federal judges similarly blocked portions of bans on gender-affirming care for minors from going into effect in Kentucky and Tennessee.

Ending Involuntary and Coercive Medical and Psychological Anti-LGBTQI+ Practices

10. Greece and Kenya took major steps to protect intersex children from medically unnecessary “sex normalization” surgeries.

11. Spain, Iceland, and Cyprus joined the list of countries of countries that ban so-called “conversion therapy” practices — a list that also includes Canada, France, Malta, and (for minors only) Germany, Greece, and New Zealand.

12. Following President Biden’s Pride Month Executive Order last year, the State Department recently rolled out the U.S. government’s action plan to globally combat these so-called “conversion therapy” practices.

13. Vietnam officially adopted the positions that same-sex attraction and transgender status are not mental health disorders, bringing the nation in line with global health and human rights standards.

Rights and Resistance

14. In February, Kenya’s high court ruled in favor of the National Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, ending its decade-long battle for official recognition. And just this month, Eswatini’s Supreme Court similarly ruled that denying LGBTQI+ organizations the right to register is discriminatory and unconstitutional. 

15. In recognition of her extraordinary advocacy for LGBTQI+ rights in war-torn Ukraine, TIME named Olena Shevchenko, leader of the Insight NGO, as one of its Women of the Year.

16. Activists such as Aleksandr Voronov have continued to promote social, legal, and health services for LGBTQI+ Russians, and a free civil society more generally, despite being forced to leave their homeland.

17. Tens of thousands of people marched in the Warsaw Pride parade a week ago in defiance of the right-wing government. This comes after yet another court ruled in favor of activists protesting the so-called “LGBT-free zones” declared by many Polish cities and towns.

Multilateral Cooperation to Promote LGBTQI+ Human Rights

18. In advance of May’s G7 summit in Hiroshima, Japanese LGBTQI+ activists hosted their international counterparts in the first-ever meeting of the “Pride 7,” or P7, to promote both domestic LGBTQI+ rights and coordination by the largest alliance of democratic industrial economies to promote LGBTQI+ human rights globally. This led to the passage of Japan’s first LGBTQI+ rights law.

19. The list of countries with ambassador-level officials promoting global LGBTQI+ human rights has grown to five: Argentina, France, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States. (Brazil and Germany also have high-level political appointees promoting internal LGBTQI+ rights.)

20. 50,000 people marched across the iconic Sydney Harbor Bridge as part of World Pride ’23 celebrations, a landmark event promoting LGBTQI+ human rights across Asia and the Pacific. And mark your calendars for World Pride ’25 in Washington, D.C.!

21. At World Pride, Australia announced its increased contribution to the Global Equality Fund. The Global Equality Fund, with the support of nearly twenty countries plus numerous private sector partners, has now distributed more than $100 million to promote LGBTQI+ civil society and protect LGBTQI+ human rights defenders in its ten years of operating. Earlier this spring, Spain became the 18th member of GEF, and just this week, New Zealand became #19.

22. USAID launched the Rainbow Fund, an initiative through which U.S. missions overseas integrate LGBTQI+ considerations into a broad range of sectors, including economic empowerment, education, health services, food security, and anti-corruption programs. USAID also launched the Alliance for Global Equality, a public-private partnership to promote LGBTQI+ community-based groups, build networks for LGBTQI+ workplace and social inclusion, and support leadership development in service of strengthening democracy. The State Department launched the Global LGBTQI+ Inclusive Democracy and Empowerment (GLIDE) initiative to support LGBTQI+ participation in democratic institutions.

23. Victor Madrigal-Borloz is just now completing his highly successful final term as the United Nations Independent Expert on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity, promoting LGBTQI+ human rights all over the world and institutionalizing SOGIESC work within U.N. institutions. The LGBTI Core Group, an alliance of U.N. members dedicated to advancing LGBTQI+ human rights through the United Nations, welcomed six new members: Denmark, the Dominican Republic, Finland, Honduras, Ireland, and Timor Leste.

Yes, we know that some of these steps are partial victories, whether we’re looking at the limits of the U.S. Respect for Marriage Act, the watered-down compromise bill passed by the Japanese Diet, the ban on marriage equality written into Singapore’s repeal of Section 377A, or Pope Francis’s continued reference to homosexuality as “sin.” And none of these steps forward mitigate the horrors of the vicious anti-LGBTQI+ laws that have been passed recently in U.S. states and around the world, the transphobic hysteria whipped up by cynical politicians, the war still raging in Ukraine, or the violence endured and the fears experienced by our communities in too many parts of the world.

We know all that; we, and many of you, work day in and day out on those issues, and we never forget that. We keep up our advocacy to make U.S. foreign policy more LGBTQI+-inclusive, to strengthen LGBTQI+ civil society around the world, and to show that democracy and human rights for all really mean for all. Rights are hard-fought by our communities and by fearless advocates in all countries. Justice is achieved step by step, small victory after small victory.

As we wind down June, as we keep our eye on bending the arc of history towards justice, it’s important to take a moment to celebrate our victories and remember what we have indeed accomplished. After all, the movement for LGBTQI+ human rights is one that continues all year round, and that’s something to be proud of.

Pride (In the Name of Human Rights and Democracy)

Pride celebrations offer countless benefits for LGBTQI+ individuals and communities as well as for society at large. These inclusive and vibrant events play a crucial role in promoting visibility, fostering acceptance, and advancing LGBTQI+ rights.

In particular, Pride marches, festivals, and other events catalyze social and political change, historically pivotal in advancing LGBTQI+ rights. They have been at the forefront of advocacy efforts, igniting essential conversations on legal reform, anti-discrimination laws, and equal rights. By mobilizing the community and its allies, Pride celebrations amplify voices, shed light on critical issues, and pressure governments and institutions to take action. They are potent tools for progress, paving the way toward a more inclusive society.

Indeed, in our ever-increasingly polarized world, Pride events are especially invaluable as joyous celebrations that allow people to feel both personally celebrated and united in community.

However, it is essential to acknowledge that despite festive Pride celebrations around the world, LGBTQI+ individuals everywhere continue to face isolation, rejection, and discrimination based on their sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, or sex characteristics in many countries, including here in the United States. These realities often create a hostile environment, foster significant resistance to building more inclusive societies, and can even lead to violence against Pride events. But the point of Pride is, quite literally, to march on in the face of these challenges.

In some countries, U.S. embassies provide a safe space for LGBTQI+ individuals to come together, engage with policymakers, and organize cultural events, including Pride celebrations.

The simple yet powerful act of flying the Rainbow or Progress flag at U.S. embassies to commemorate Pride Month sends a resounding message of solidarity with local LGBTQI+ communities.

(LGBTQI+ Pride March in Brussels, May 21, 2022)

In Kenya, LGBTQI+ activists have organized and participated in Pride events at the local U.S. embassy – some of the first in the country. Some of these events have represented important milestones in the community’s advancement, lending significant visibility to the community.

However, in some countries in the Middle East, a solidarity message in celebration of Pride from the U.S. embassy on social media has been met with hostile responses and backlash towards the community.

In the United States, there are growing debates among Republicans questioning the State Department’s efforts to advance global LGBTQI+ human rights. Some argue that the U.S. government should refrain from engaging in contentious cultural matters, including those related to LGBTQI+ issues. But human rights are universal; they are not historically or culturally dependent.  

To be clear, Pride celebrations provide an opportunity for the U.S. government to demonstrate its commitment to human rights and equality for all. As a country that values individual freedoms and the principles of non-discrimination, the U.S. has a responsibility to stand up for LGBTQI+ rights worldwide. By endorsing and participating in Pride celebrations and, where appropriate, flying the Rainbow or Progress flag, the U.S. government sends a powerful message to other nations that it stands in solidarity with LGBTQI+ communities and advocates for their rights to be recognized and protected.

At its essence, Pride represents much more than the pursuit of LGBTQI+ equality. It embodies the fundamental principles of human rights and equality for all while acknowledging the historical injustices within our nation. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Brian Nichols, in a compelling piece in The Nassau Guardian last year, eloquently expresses this sentiment by affirming that when U.S. embassies fly the rainbow flag it symbolizes not only Pride Month but also a collective recognition that human rights are universal. “The racist murder of Black Americans is as reprehensible as the bias-driven murders of LGBTQI+ individuals,” insists Ambassador Nichols. “In all such cases, they are hate crimes. This is why our U.S. embassies display this symbol proudly, to recognize universal, indivisible human rights.”

Additionally, Pride celebrations are no longer just local or national events. Instead, Pride celebrations align with the broader U.S. foreign policy objectives of promoting democracy, human rights, economic development, and social justice. By actively engaging with these celebrations, the U.S. government demonstrates its unwavering commitment to these values, bolstering its reputation as a defender of human rights and progressive ideals.

To ensure LGBTQI+ activists and civil society groups are better prepared to partner with U.S. embassies during Pride celebrations and beyond, the Council for Global Equality just released a new publication – Accessing U.S. Embassies a Guide for LGBTQI+ Human Rights Defenders.

At their most powerful, Pride celebrations can significantly impact public opinion and societal attitudes. By supporting these celebrations, the U.S. government contributes to the global shift towards greater LGBTQI+ acceptance and inclusivity. This support can inspire and empower activists in other countries, giving them the recognition and validation to continue their work for change. It can also challenge harmful narratives and stereotypes, fostering an environment of respect and understanding.

Despite the progress we have made on LGBTQI+ issues in the United States, it becomes evident that the importance of Pride remains as significant as ever. Declaring a national state of emergency for LGBTQ+ Americans, the Human Rights Campaign warns that, regrettably, our nation has experienced alarming regression rather than progress in recent years when it comes to LGBTQI+ issues. This underscores the ongoing need for our unwavering commitment to the fight for human dignity.

Pride celebrations also provide an opportunity for the U.S. government to address the challenges faced by LGBTQ+ individuals in other countries. By highlighting human rights abuses, discriminatory laws, and societal stigmatization, the U.S. can pressure governments to reform policies and protect the rights of LGBTQI+ individuals. Through public statements, diplomatic channels, and engagement with international organizations, the U.S. government can advocate for legal reforms, anti-discrimination measures, and the decriminalization of homosexuality.

Finally, In his poignant and compelling remarks for Budapest Pride this year, Ambassador David Pressman effectively underscores the continued relevance of Pride and its profound implications for the future of our democracy. The struggle for human dignity extends far beyond achieving individual accomplishments or reaching specific milestones. It is a continuous journey that demands our persistent efforts and unwavering vigilance. Just like democracy itself, the pursuit of human rights and equality is an ever-evolving process that requires us to remain resolute in our commitment to protect and advance the rights of all individuals, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

IDAHOBIT 2023: Ending Conversion Therapy Practices Globally

Today, we celebrate IDAHOBIT, the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Interphobia, and Transphobia. IDAHOBIT’s organizers, in announcing this year’s theme — “Together Always: United in Diversity” — note how at “a time where the progress made by our LGBTQIA+ communities worldwide is increasingly at risk, it is crucial to recognize the power of solidarity, community, and allyship across different identities, movements, and borders.”

We are pleased to see, in observing IDAHOBIT this year, the United States government has demonstrated its solidarity and allyship with the global LGBTQI+ community by now rolling out its action plan to promote the end of conversion therapy practices around the world.

In a statement today marking IDAHOBIT, Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared …

the United States reaffirms our commitment to exposing the harm conversion therapy practices cause to LGBTQI+ persons. We reaffirm the importance of ensuring access to evidence-based healthcare without discrimination or stigma regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or sex characteristics. We recommit to opposing the criminalization of LGBTQI+ status or conduct, which can drive the pathologizing of LGBTQI+ persons and the practice of so-called conversion therapy. We confirm that conversion therapy practices are inconsistent with U.S. nondiscrimination policies and ineligible for support through taxpayer-funded foreign assistance grants and contracts.

As you may recall, President Biden issued an Executive Order for Pride Month last year that instructed the relevant agencies to “address so-called conversion therapy around the world … the Secretary of State, in collaboration with the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of HHS, and the Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development, shall develop an action plan to promote an end to its use around the world.” 

In response to E.O. 10475, the Council for Global Equality issued our recommendations for implementing President Biden’s order. The action plan announced today draws upon the CGE issue brief, along with the input of experts from State, USAID, Treasury, and HHS.

Now, fulfilling the directives promised in E.O. 10475, the U.S. government — through its embassies, consulates, and missions around the world and across a broad range of federal agencies — is committing itself to the numerous partnerships necessary to end these abusive practices. This includes working with LGBTQI+ community groups around the world; with like-minded allies and other partner governments; with counterparts in foreign ministries of health and justice; and with faith leaders, educators, professional associations, and other civil society networks.

The U.S. government also plans to work to end CTPs at various multilateral institutions, including the development banks and international development institutions to which the United States is a party, to ensure that no financial or programmatic support, direct or otherwise, goes towards CTPs.

The action plan draws from a well-equipped toolbox designed to make sure that initiatives to end conversion therapy practices globally are informed by local actors and suitably tailored to the local context. This toolbox includes, but is not limited to:

• Developing and promoting educational programs, technical assistance, and trainings for a broad range of partners
• Reviewing health guidance and programs to likewise prevent such practices
• Explicitly addressing CTPs in community engagement initiatives
• Working to ensure that U.S. taxpayer-funded foreign assistance grants and contracts do not permit or enable CTPs
• Soliciting proposals under the Global Equality Fund and the Rainbow Fund for programming to respond to and prevent CTPs globally by empowering civil society, improving acceptance and tolerance of LGBTQI+ persons, and advancing policies with the aim of responding to and preventing CTPs

Ending so-called “conversion therapy” — a deeply abusive and discredited set of practices bankrolled by pseudoscientific businesses, religious extremists, and other anti-LGBTQI+ forces to the tune of billions of dollars per year — will be a long but essential journey for our country and our global movement. But on this IDAHOBIT, as we celebrate the resilience, creativity, and bravery of our community in the face of those who would do us harm, we are grateful for the allyship of the Biden Administration in taking these steps towards a day when conversion therapy practices are confined to the dustbin of history.

Happy IDAHOBIT!

The P7 and LGBTQI+ Human Rights in Japan

Next month, the annual G7 summit will be held in Hiroshima, Japan. Last week, in preparation for the G7 meeting taking place May 19-21, a group of LGBTQI+ activists, diplomats, business leaders, and government officials from the G7 countries gathered in Tokyo. Our Co-Chair, Mark Bromley, represented CGE at this inaugural Pride 7 Summit — the P7, for short — as it called on the wealthiest and most powerful democracies in the G7 to do more to support their own LGBTQI+ citizens as well as LGBTQI+ people around the world.

The call was particularly targeted at Japan, which is the only G7 member without any national legal protection for LGBTQI+ persons and the only G7 country that does not recognize same-sex marriage equality. As recently as last year, courts in both Tokyo and Osaka upheld the constitutionality of Japan’s ban on same-sex marriage; these two rulings came after a Sapporo court in 2021 found the lack of marriage equality to be a constitutional violation. More marriage cases are in the legal pipeline.

On the surface, Japan might not seem like a particularly oppressive country for LGBTQI+ people: after all, Tokyo will host a large Pride celebration later this month, anti-LGBTQI+ violence is rare, and homosexuality is not criminalized. But as an Amnesty International report documented, discrimination against LGBTQI+ citizens in Japan is pervasive.

As Human Rights Watch recently noted, “Japan lacks nondiscrimination protections for LGBT people, despite strong support for a national “Equality Act”. Japan also forces trans people who want to legally change their gender to appeal to a family court, undergo a psychiatric evaluation, and be surgically sterilized.”

A leaked private letter sent to Prime Minister Fumio Kishida by ambassadors from the other G6 countries plus the European Union has called on the Japanese government to enact nondiscrimination protections for sexual orientation, gender identity, and sex characteristics. For a generally cautious diplomatic group to express such frustration with a very close ally is a remarkable statement.

Japan stands out among its G7 peers. It is the only G7 member that hasn’t joined the Equal Rights Coalition, the intergovernmental coalition dedicated to promoting the human rights of LGBTQI+ people and strengthening LGBTQI+ civil society around the world. Moreover, Japan does not provide any dedicated development assistance funding to LGBTQI+ issues or civil society — in stark contrast to the $50 million that the United States Congress earmarked this year for support to global LGBTQI+ concerns through USAID and the State Department.

We know that Japan is hardly the only democracy failing to fully promote LGBTQI+ human rights. Few countries scored particularly well on the recent LGBTQI+ Report Cards released by the Council for Global Equality and F&M Global Barometers ahead of the Biden Administration’s Summit for Democracy last week. Of the G7 members, Italy and the United States join Japan in receiving failing grades, while Canada was the only member to receive an A. Certainly, all G7 members can do far better by their LGBTQI+ citizens, but Japan in particular owes its LGBTQI+ citizens more.

At the P7 Summit, LGBTQI+ activists, business and labor leaders, diplomats, and other participants spoke of their experiences with discrimination and called on Tokyo to endorse marriage equality and pass anti-discrimination legislation swiftly ahead of next month’s G7. The group also called out the conservatism of Prime Minister Kishida’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party, which continues to resist growing support for LGBTQI+ rights among both the general public and the business community. Dozens of members of Japan’s Diet — including several LDP members — participated in the event and endorsed the call for an LGBTQI+ nondiscrimination law.

All G7 countries can do better by their LGBTQI+ citizens. But this is the ideal time for the Japanese government to act — and not only because of the recent scandal where Kishida dismissed a close aide following the aide’s homophobic remarks. In doing so, the Prime Minister declared such remarks “totally inconsistent with government policy.” Now, before the May heads of state G7 meeting in Hiroshima, is the time for Tokyo to back up Kishida’s words with action.

Moving forward, as the G7 presidency rotates to Italy next year, CGE joins the U.S. Embassy in calling for the P7 to become permanent. The U.S. embassy tweeted its support for the event and called for Pride 7 to become an “official engagement group” attached to the G7 process on a permanent basis. We will need to push Rome to pick this up next year, but promisingly, the Italian Embassy to Japan participated in the Tokyo launch of P7 and offered its diplomatic support.  

Towards the Global End to Conversion Practices

In his Pride Month Executive Order, President Biden declared that the U.S. government “must safeguard LGBTQI+ youth from dangerous practices like so-called ‘conversion therapy’,” both at home and overseas. To that end, the White House instructed U.S. foreign affairs agencies to “develop an action plan to promote an end to its use around the world,” through the use of foreign assistance programs, participation in multilateral development banks and international development institutions, and through other work by U.S. embassies and missions worldwide.

The Council for Global Equality has now submitted our recommendations on how to implement the provisions of President Biden’s Executive Order regarding conversion practices around the world. This policy brief — submitted to our U.S. government partners — draws on extensive research in conversion practices, as well as on consultations with CGE’s 32 member organizations, many of which possess substantial expertise on the issue.

We enthusiastically encourage you to read and share the full policy brief. The paper outlines the issue and surveys the broad range of legal and administrative approaches to combatting conversion practices, in the United States and in other members of the Equal Rights Coalition and like-minded democracies. Such approaches include criminalization, consumer fraud regulations, restrictions targeting medical professionals, and prohibitions on advertising and on government subsidies for conversion practices. Some national and state/federal laws single out minors for protection; others cover all individuals, regardless of age.

Our recommendations fall into ten buckets of engagement: bilateral relationships; multilateral relationships and institutions; the Treasury Department and international financial institutions; LGBTQI+ communities and other civil society partners; professional associations; funding opportunities; research and reporting; leadership development; sanctions; and immigration and consular responses.

Across these buckets, we emphasize that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to ending conversion practices globally, and all approaches need to be developed in consultation with local advocates and organizations on the ground in a given country. Such collaborations are absolutely essential for creating effective strategies, programs, and language.

To that end, we endorse the language adopted by USAID to guide its work promoting LGBTQI+ inclusive development, to “do no harm” and to “do nothing about them without them.” At the same time, we must emphasize that these cannot be interpreted to mean “do nothing.”

We further note that conversion practices violate the U.S. commitment to non-discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and sex characteristics in its foreign assistance.

We observe that bans are the most visible type of policy to combat conversion practices. However, in many countries, the rule of law is fragile, and laws on the books may not be enforced and/or are selectively enforced against marginalized populations. Additionally, we encourage consideration of how criminalization-based approaches can risk driving conversion practices underground.

In some cases and some contexts, especially but not limited to when conversion practices rise to the level of torture, criminalization may be the appropriate first response. In other situations, appropriate strategies may include civil remedies and regulatory prohibitions. In all contexts, however, the United States should promote the prevention of conversion practices, taking the lead from local LGBTQI+ communities on the best path forward in their local context.

We support bans where they make sense given local conditions, and we encourage U.S. representatives and their international counterparts to start from the principle that legal and cultural interventions go hand-in-hand. When pursuing legislative tools, we suggest that proponents approach such work from the perspective that legal campaigns can drive national conversations for culture change, thus decreasing the stigma and prejudice that give rise to conversion practices.

We also want to make particular note that nonconsensual surgeries and hormonal therapies aimed at erasing a minor’s intersex traits should be considered to fall under the umbrella term of conversion practices, as they are conducted in order to confirm children into binary, heteronormative notions of sex and gender.

Furthermore, this discussion must be understood as a manifestation of the rapid surge globally in anti-LGBTQI+ and especially anti-transgender activism, which links to a much broader and increasingly political anti-gender movement that seeks in many cases to deny LGBTQI+ identities and undermine democratic systems themselves.

Finally, it must be noted that some practitioners of conversion practices defend these practices as a matter of religious freedom, which is both a fundamental human right and a right that is further anchored by the rights to freedom of speech and freedom of association. The Council for Global Equality acknowledges and respects the vitality, hope, and meaning that religious practice brings to the lives of many, including many LGBTQI+ persons of faith. But as a matter of religious practice, a line must be drawn between freedom of speech and belief, which fully permits the articulation of any theological idea about human sexuality, and quasi-medical or psychological interventions that extend beyond theological speech and can be deeply harmful. It is one thing to posit and defend religious perspectives on permissible human conduct and sexuality. But it is another thing altogether to direct “spiritual or religious treatment” with the intent of converting LGBTQI+ expressions or identities, especially toward minors who are particularly vulnerable and may lack the opportunity or capacity to consent.

Conversations with religious proponents of conversion practices could benefit from a stronger recognition that many faith traditions affirm LGBTQI+ identities and reject conversion practices as an affront to the individuality and unique divinity of each human being. But ultimately, the absolute right to religious belief does not accommodate a corresponding right to religious practice that causes deep physical or psychological harm.