A new article out from the Washington Post features a bizarre comparison, stating essentially that the anti-gay backlash in the Middle East is a mirror, or "echo," of the US culture wars. The article posits that anti-gay sentiment in Turkey, Lebanon, and other Middle Eastern countries is "echoing efforts by prominent American conservatives to restrict the rights of gay and transgender people and erase their influence from society."
Not only is this a misconception of what conservatives are about as regards the LGBTQ agenda in the US, but it is strange to say that religious and culturally conservative groups and people in the Middle East are jumping on board with an American conservative movement, and not simply pushing back against the insidious overreach of a progressive left that wants to queer the world.
Shortly after taking office in 2021, President Joe Biden made it clear that he had a global foreign policy agenda of bringing the LGBTQ agenda to nations worldwide. His first foreign policy memo, on Advancing the Human Rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex Persons Around the World, laid out an agenda for the US to directly, through diplomacy and foreign aid, "promote and protect the human rights of LGBTQI+ persons."
This meant that Biden would send money to foreign nations for the purpose of that aid being used to further a queer global agenda. Much like previous administrations have used aid to push abortions, Biden is using it to push homosexuality and gender transition in cultures where such concepts are not welcomed. What is this if not a progressive ideological colonialism? The money is accompanied by an ethos, and if a nation wants the money, they must accept the ethos to get it.
This is a quasi-religious, progressive force designed to monetarily incentivize total societal transformation. And it's being done in the name of Americans and with our money. Meanwhile, the progressive left in the US continuously derides the concept of colonization when it was done, historically, with a Christian perspective. Now that they have created and embraced their own gender and sexual religion, they see it as only right and just that it should be preached to the global uneducated masses, and they provide the funding to make it happen.
While the memo advocates for the cessation of violence on the basis of sexual or gender identity, which is of course a worthwhile undertaking, it is also something of an overreach into foreign nations and cultures in which we do not uniformly demand good labor conditions, a cessation of the use of slave labor, an end to human trafficking, or an end to corruption in government. Instead, Biden has placed the advancement of the LGBTQ agenda at the forefront of his foreign agenda—and American progressives are shocked when nations that do not share those values push back.
Biden's memo stated that federal agencies advance the LGBTQ agenda with their global funding policies and that diplomatic measures be taken overseas to push foreign governments to take the same kind of approach as regards LGBTQ policy as the US does.
These actions include sanctions and visa restrictions against nations that do not comply. "When foreign governments move to restrict the rights of LGBTQI+ persons or fail to enforce legal protections in place, thereby contributing to a climate of intolerance, agencies engaged abroad shall consider appropriate responses, including using the full range of diplomatic and assistance tools and, as appropriate, financial sanctions, visa restrictions, and other actions," the memo reads.
The Biden administration sent an envoy to Hungary to push an LGBTQ agenda after they found it ideologically unfavorable, with Hungarian President Viktor Orban's push for family and opposition to the queering of Hungarian culture. Orban's administration is not on board with these ideologies, and Biden's State Department just implemented visa restrictions on Hungary, claiming that these restrictions were over security concerns.
American companies like Disney, Target, IBM, and other back a global group called GLSEN (pronounced "glisten") and brings an LGBTQ education agenda to countries around the world. GLSEN has been "championing LGBTQ issues in k-12 education since 1990," and they are remarkably proud of that work. GLSEN operates in Latin American nations, despite many of those nations having a traditional perspective that is anathema to the queering of youth.
GLSEN has partnered with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), to bring their LEGBTQ ideology for students to Europe, Asia, the Middle East, North and South America. Their plan is to address "homophobic and transphobic bullying and the experiences of LGBT students worldwide." And they are digging into the Middle East, as well as Turkey.
But for the Washington Post, the "crackdown" on LGBTQ communities is "echoing effort by prominent American conservatives to restrict the rights of gay and transgender people and erase their influence from society."
They cite Turkey as a primary example, a nation that is part of the European Union. One of these massive protests, where thousands of demonstrators opposed what they call gay propaganda and LGBTQ groups, happened in September 2022. The Washington Post believes it is fueled by American conservatism, but isn't it more likely that it's fueled by opposition to a creeping, encroaching ideology that is not welcome in this traditionalist nation?
In fact, Foreign Policy magazine posited such a potentiality in March 2021, shortly after Biden's memo was released. They said that Biden was "in danger of overpromising. Delivering consistent and effective defenses of global LGBTQ rights is going to be tough—and, in some cases, impossible." Many nations that receive US aid, including Yemen, which took home $700 million in 2019 from the US, oppose LGBTQ lifestyles entirely. That nation also has a major humanitarian crisis.
"Even in Europe," Foreign Policy said, "there is a real risk that pushing countries such as Hungary (where same-sex conduct has been legal for decades) to recognize gender changes and same-sex marriage under the law could result in a backlash."
And indeed, it has. When it comes to backlash against LGBTQ ideology abroad, that backlash is not a result of mimicking US conservatives, who are struggling to prevent female erasure and uphold biological reality in the face of a trans ideological onslaught, but the Biden administration's imperialist threat to their traditionalist perspectives and ways of running their societies.
