Posted on 02/20/2019 12:12:51 PM PST by EdnaMode
The Trump administration is set to launch a global campaign to decriminalize homosexuality in dozens of nations where anti-gay laws are still on the books, NBC News reported Monday. While on its surface, the move looks like an atypically benevolent decision by the Trump administration, the details of the campaign belie a different story. Rather than actually being about helping queer people around the world, the campaign looks more like another instance of the right using queer people as a pawn to amass power and enact its own agenda.
It almost goes without saying but the Trump administration does not have a great human rights record at home when it comes to LGBTQ+ issues. Advocacy group GLAAD has kept a record of the many times the administration has harmed LGBTQ+ people, from its transgender military ban to the reversal of plans to include LGBTQ people on the 2020 US census. And prior to his ill-conceived plan to address the HIV/AIDS epidemic, Trump’s administration had an abysmal record on addressing the virus.
The most telling detail of NBC News’ report is that his plan centers homophobic violence in Iran, who NBC News calls the administration’s “top geopolitical foe.” The plan has reportedly been spearheaded by the U.S. ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, who is also the administration’s top-ranked gay official, in response to news that a young gay man was hanged in Iran recently. Grenell has had his eyes on Iran for some time and just a week ago, he was trying to get several European nations to pass sanctions on Iran, unrelated to the country’s stance on homosexuality, to no avail.
Homosexuality has been illegal in Iran since the theocratic 1979 Islamic Revolution. By at least one Guardian account, since the exit of president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2013, enforcement of anti-gay laws has softened somewhat. Homosexuality, according to the writer, is an “open secret” and most queer people fear homophobic reaction from fellow citizens more than the authorities.
Grennell’s sudden interest in Iran’s anti-gay laws is strikingly similar to Trump’s rhetoric after the 2016 Pulse massacre in Orlando, Florida. After the deadly shooting, Trump used the 49 deaths as a way to galvanize support for an anti-Muslim agenda rather than find a way to support LGBTQ+ people. In pushing for immigration restrictions and a Muslim ban, Trump argued, he was the true pro-LGBTQ+ candidate. Rather than honor those who died, Trump used the tragedy as a way to stoke fear among the American people, and Grennell is taking similar actions with Iran — trying to reach an economic goal by painting the administration’s opponent as anti-gay.
“We know Trump is very focused on Iran and is looking for ways to demonize it in the public opinion and this is one area where you know the US and European countries see eye to eye on Iran,” Josh Lederman, who reported the original NBC News story, told Out in a phone interview. “So it makes for them to focus strategically on that rather than sanctions, where there’s been a big gulf between the U.S. and its allies.”
The truth is, this is part of an old colonialist handbook. In her essay, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” postcolonial theorist Gayatri Spivak coined the term “White men saving brown women from brown men” to describe the racist, paternalistic process by which colonizing powers would decry the way men in power treated oppressed groups, like women, to justify attacking them. Spivak was referencing the British colonial agenda in India. But Grennell’s attack might be a case of white men trying to save brown gay men from brown straight men, to the same end.
There are several signs that this decision is denoted in a colonial sense of paternalism rather than any true altruism. According to the report, the decriminalization campaign is set to begin in Berlin where LGBTQ+ activists from across Europe will meet to hatch a plan that is “mostly concentrated in the Middle East, Africa, and the Caribbean.”
That sentence alone should set off several alarm bells. First of all, the Middle East, Africa, and the Caribbean are huge geopolitical entities. Attitudes toward gay people differ greatly among countries and regions within those entities and attempting to gather a room of European activists on how to deal with queer issues in those regions is the definition of paternalism.
According to Lederman, the names of the activists attending the dinner, scheduled for Tuesday night in Berlin, are not yet known, but they hail from a dozen European countries, including countries from Eastern and Central Europe, where legal protections for LGBTQ+ people are weaker than in Western Europe. The names of the activists are being concealed as some are not ready to be identified publicly.
Lederman says that the sentiment on the ground is that the initiative is “very much a work in progress” and that they made the announcement while “there’s still a lot of strategy being worked out.” However, Lederman did confirm that as of right now, activists from countries in the regions being discussed — from Africa, the Middle East, and the Caribbean — are not currently being brought to the discussion table.
“They’re not sure what it’s going to look like as it gets fleshed out,” and while he says they could possibly invite people from affected regions “at a future date,” he says right now they’re still working out details.
Lederman plans to sit down with Grennell as well as several activists who attended the dinner meeting in Berlin for an interview that will air on MSNBC at a later date.
Though plans may or may not exist to invite local LGBTQ+ advocacy groups to the table, that they are not there at the plan’s inception is dangerous. Inviting European activists to solve problems in the Middle East, African or the Caribbean — which, once again, are not monolithic in the slightest — is a toothless effort, more PR than progressive.
When did homosexuals become a race?
Eff fagdom!
No. He is basically saying quit killing people for being gay. That’s it. And I agree with him on that. Do not agree with the gay agenda, but am against killing people for being gay.
Hey Mr. idiot writer, ISIS would throw you off of a building in a heart beat for being gay and then stone you to make sure. America has fought ISIS under this President not to save your gay ass but for every AMERICAN.
It’s not about Trump, It’s about the fact that the movers and the Shakers of the gay Rights Movement never cared about gay people, they just pretend to in order to advance transgenderism and bisexuality. They’re just a bunch of marxists trying to undermine the nuclear family in order to weaken the West.
They don’t care about gays, They Don’t Care About Women, they don’t care about blacks. And all the gays, women, and blacks who go along with their agenda because they really believe that these phonies care about them are just useful idiots. They need to be educated, not hated. It’s the phony movers and shakers of these movements who need to be hated and outed.
If we conservatives want to go to battle against the Marxist left, then we need to separate the movers and the Shakers from the useful idiots, instead of lumping them together... This is a big mistake on our part.
It’s not about Trump, It’s about the fact that the movers and the Shakers of the gay Rights Movement never cared about gay people, they just pretend to in order to advance transgenderism and bisexuality. They’re just a bunch of marxists trying to undermine the nuclear family in order to weaken the West.
They don’t care about gays, They Don’t Care About Women, they don’t care about blacks. And all the gays, women, and blacks who go along with their agenda because they really believe that these phonies care about them are just useful idiots. They need to be educated, not hated. It’s the phony movers and shakers of these movements who need to be hated and outed.
If we conservatives want to go to battle against the Marxist left, then we need to separate the movers and the Shakers from the useful idiots, instead of lumping them together... This is a big mistake on our part.
Kind'a makes you want to go back to the old days when you just beat 'em up.
Yeah..
Unless you tell them:"Suck this!"... Referring to a lemon, of course...
Try......wait for it......Google!!
“Advocacy group GLAAD has kept a record of the many times the administration has harmed LGBTQ+ people, from its transgender military ban to the reversal of plans to include LGBTQ people on the 2020 US census.”
I went to GLAAD’s (lavender) website to see just what GLAAD equates with the execution of gays in foreign countries, like Iran and much of the Middle East and Africa. Here are the first 10 [with my comments in brackets]:
1. “(Trump supports) faith-based adoption agencies actively use “religious exemptions” as an excuse to deny LGBTQ families the ability to adopt a child.” [No different than throwing gays off a building, I guess.]
2. “President Trump praised Second Lady Karen Pence for teaching at an anti-LGBTQ school”. [anti-LGBT in this case means not permitting known LGBTs to attend or work there - not teaching ‘hate’ as is implied by the term]
3. “President Trump meets with Ginni Thomas, wife of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and anti-LGBTQ group Groundswell at the White House.” [No different than throwing gays off a building, I guess.]
4. “The Trump Administration approved a waiver request by South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster, which could give faith-based adoption agencies the ability to deny LGBTQ couples adoption rights based on so-called “religious exemptions”” [Yet another ‘adoption’ case as #2 also included that...there’s something going on here, and its not good]
5. “More than 13,000 federal workers identifying as LGBTQ do not receive a paycheck as President Trump’s government shutdown becomes the longest shut down in U.S. history.” [So the shutdown was really to delay 0.5% of the federal workforce from receiving a scheduled paycheck - and to think Trump claimed it was about some ‘wall’. I think even LGBTs would have a tough time taking seriously a list that includes this one.]
Screw it, I’m stopping at 5, this is stupid.
No pleasing some people...
You can’t make this stuff up.
That pretty much sums it up.
Old racists pushed for decriminalizing homosexuality?—who knew? Now we finally know what the KKK’s hidden agenda really was all along, thanks to Out Magazine’s intrepid investigative journalism.
Every comment I read, at the site, was critical of the opinion piece.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.