Gay Rights is Now a Foreign Policy Issue
Just as the domestic debate on several major gay issues appears to be entering its end game, it is starting to heat up as a foreign policy issue.
Gay marriage is legal in an increasing number of states, gays and lesbians can now serve openly in the military and a bill to protect gay workers is widely popular with the public
At the same time, other countries are passing discriminatory laws and increasing persecution of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered people.
With broader discretion over foreign policy than domestic laws, President Obama is increasingly stepping up his criticism of anti-gay laws abroad and encouraging countries to promote gay rights.
This week, Obama publicly denounced a new law in Uganda that makes homosexual acts punishable by up to life in prison.
He also sent delegations of openly gay US athletes to represent America in his place at the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia this month — a snub at that country’s discriminatory laws against gay citizens and their supporters.
And last year, the president ignored critics at home and abroad to send an openly gay U.S. ambassador, James Brewster, to serve in the conservative Dominican Republic.
Activists say that the new focus on gay rights overseas is a culmination of years of work by Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
In 2011, Clinton spelled out exactly that policy initiative in a speech famous among foreign policy circles: “Gay rights are human rights,” she announced in Geneva, echoing another one of her famous speeches in Beijing where she said “women’s rights are human rights.”
That same day, the president released a memorandum instructing all foreign affairs agencies to find ways to promote gay rights abroad.
To be sure, American politics are far from settled on the issue of gay rights. Many Republicans continue to oppose same-sex marriage, and the fight over the Employment Non-Discrimination Act will likely take years. But there are signs that the once-hot fight among social conservatives has cooled off, such as Wednesday’s veto by Republican Gov. Jan Brewer Arizona of an anti-gay bill.
American attitudes toward more overt discrimination overseas are much more unified.
That’s because American leaders recognize that gay rights is the next battle front in the ongoing global fight to protect human rights, argued Mark Bromley of the Council for Global Equality, an international coalition promoting LGBT rights.
“Most countries around the world now understand that there are consequences to disadvantaging women or to treating some of their ethnic or indigenous minorities with contempt,” Bromley said. “But there’s still sort of a free rein in many countries to target and persecute many LGBT individuals.”
He also thinks some leaders, such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin, foment persecution of their gay citizens to distract from greater economic and political stability problems.
Whatever the reason, it’s jarring to compare American laws that allow gay couples to marry in 17 states with foreign laws that make homosexuality illegal in 38 African countries, said Ty Cobb, who runs the global engagement program for the LGBT advocacy group Human Rights Campaign.
“Americans are shocked by the contrast between the progress we’re seeing and the backsliding in other countries,” he said.
That may explain why unlike the domestically divisive issue of same-sex marriage, supporting basic gay rights abroad is an increasingly bipartisan issue in Congress.
In 2009, Congress passed a bill aimed at curbing domestic hate crimes based on gender or sexual identity.
Today, it’s become routine for a handful of Republicans to speak out against discriminatory LGBT laws like those in Uganda.
U.S. Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, who serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and is a leader on this issue, said in a statement when the law passed Uganda’s parliament: “All people deserve to be treated with dignity and respect across every country and continent.”
Sen. Jim Inhofe of Oklahoma, who regularly travels to Uganda and once described his trips as “more of a Jesus thing,” reprimanded the law this week: “ …[I]t it is my hope that the country will abandon this unjust and harsh legislation.”
All this isn’t a surprise for Rep. Charlie Dent, a center-right Republican from Pennsylvania who is one of the few House Republicans to support a bill to protect gay workers.
Dent said he and his colleagues recognize that once discrimination of LGBT people becomes a human rights issue, the American government has a requirement to step in.
“I think most reasonable people can distinguish between laws that prohibit gay marriage and laws that criminalize individuals because of their sexual orientation,” he said.
Cobb, with the Human Rights Campaign, agreed.
“I think it’s important that we all stand up for values that someone as a bare minimum should not be murdered for who they love,” he said.
In that sense, America’s newest foreign policy initiative may also be one of its most bipartisan — even when the dust is still settling from its own debate on gay rights.
By Amber Phillips, Digital First Media
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