Obama’s Foreign Policy Legacy: Chaos and LGBT

Wendy Wright, catholiccitizens.or

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Excerpt:

As President Obama nears the end of his term his foreign policy remains indecipherable even to experts. His reticence in foreign affairs – even in cases of genocide – is legendary, except for one matter. A coordinated game plan on one key issue emerges through officials’ speeches, obscure overseas funding, even “buttonholing” diplomats in UN bathrooms to reveal an Obama foreign policy priority.

“Internationally, this Administration has bent over backwards to promote LGBT rights globally but stay[sic] silent as Christian minorities abroad suffer persecution and in the Middle East genocide,” a former senior State Department official told the Friday Fax.

In 2011 Hillary Clinton declared lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) rights a priority and Obama established a “Global Equality Fund” to give money to LGBT activists who combat restrictions such as requiring that persons identify their biological sex on passports. ...

Since 2012, the U.S. gave nearly $41 million specifically to promote LGBT globally, not including resources spent as officials integrate LGBT issues throughout government work.

A 2013 Presidential Memorandum details the integration of abortion and homosexual rights through diplomatic means across 20 government agencies from Agriculture to the Peace Corps, and coordinated by the National Security Advisor.

A State Department fact sheet listed its “significantly expanded efforts” to promote LGBT through “private engagement with governments and civil society, public diplomacy, foreign assistance, and work in multilateral fora.” State Department leadership is “continually engaging, both privately and publicly, on behalf of LGBT refugees and asylum seekers.” ...