Biden Admin Has Made Exporting ‘LGBT Ideology’ A Key Foreign Policy Priority, Report Says

Biden Admin Has Made Exporting ‘LGBT Ideology’ A Key Foreign Policy Priority, Report Says

Kate Anderson on June 13, 2023

• The Biden administration has made pushing its LGBT agenda abroad a top foreign policy priority, according to a new report by the Family Research Council. 
• In 2021, the U.S. Embassy in Portugal granted $10,000 to the film festival “Queer Lisboa” with performances from “drag queens and depictions of incest and pedophilia,” and then in 2022, the U.S. Embassy in Ecuador gave a $20,600 grant to the Centro Ecuatoriano Norteamericano Abraham Lincoln (CENA) for “drag theater performances and LGBT-themed media.” 
• “I think the American taxpayers would be very shocked to know that their hard-earned tax dollars are funding some of these programs, especially when this is not a settled issue in the United States … so why are we exporting all of these problems to other countries,” Arielle Del Turco, FRC’s director of the Center for Religious Liberty and author of the report, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The Biden administration has made exporting “LGBT ideology” a top priority in its foreign policy, according to a new report released Monday.

The Family Research Council’s report, “Exporting LGBTQ Ideology: The Biden Administrations Foreign Policy Priority,” reveals how the administration has been ramping up its efforts, and its spending, to impose its LGBT agenda on foreign soil. Since 2021, the administration has funded” LGBT activism, programs, and research,” “officially recognized LGBT commemoration days,” “prioritized LGBT refugees, and made Pride Month a fixture at U.S. embassies,” according to the report.

In 2011, the Obama administration issued a memorandum that argued LGBT rights were a “global challenge” and should be pushed as a major human rights issue. A decade later, the Biden administration took over and issued its own memorandum, marking it as a national security concern for the U.S. and sought to “pursue an end to discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or sex characteristics,” while leading the world in advancing LGBT rights both at home and abroad.

Arielle Del Turco, FRC’s director of the Center for Religious Liberty and author of the report, told the Daily Caller News Foundation that she expects the administration’s current trajectory to continue.

“They are very upfront about how they’re pushing the LGBT ideology abroad and they are proud of it,” Del Turco said. “Secretary of State Antony Blinken has defended this, even in a congressional hearing, he was asked about a state department grant that was offered to fund a drag show in Ecuador, and he was very happy to defend it. So this isn’t something that the Biden administration is shying away from … and what we want to do with this report is just expose to the American people the full extent of what the Biden administration is pushing abroad.”

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has doled out millions of taxpayer dollars to promote programs and policies that advance the Biden administration’s LGBTQ agenda abroad, according to FRC’s report.

In 2021, the U.S. Embassy in Portugal donated $10,000 to a film festival called “Queer Lisboa,” with performances from “drag queens and depictions of incest and pedophilia.” In 2022, the U.S. Embassy in Ecuador gave a $20,600 grant to the Centro Ecuatoriano Norteamericano Abraham Lincoln (CENA) for “drag theater performances and LGBT-themed media.”

Additionally, the U.S. has made significant donations to the Global Equality Fund (GEF), a public-private partnership organization headed by the U.S. The fund was created by former President Barack Obama in 2011 to promote LGBT priorities in “over 100 countries,” the report says.

A recent GEF grant offered up to $1.5 million for “LGBTQI+ Programs” and as of 2021, GEF had received over “$100 million in funding support,” according to the report.

In 2022, the State Department called out 67 countries for not outlawing “conversion therapy” for its LGBT citizens, which ranged from anything from “electric shock therapy” in Iran to “talk therapy or counseling, often with religious leaders or faith-based counselors,” according to the report.

While calling out blatantly harmful practices like Iran’s is a good thing, painting Christian counselors’ attempts to work with someone experiencing unwanted same-sex attraction with the same brush unfairly targets other countries’ religious beliefs, Del Turco told the DCNF.

“When the Biden administration uses the term ‘conversion therapy’ they’re really talking about any type of instance where someone may be struggling with their same-sex attracted feelings and wants to go to a counselor to talk about those [feelings],” Del Turco said. “So when the Biden administration is condemning these countries for supposedly practicing ‘conversion therapy,’ what they are really condemning is free speech for Christian counselors, they are condemning pastors that might counsel their congregants about this issue.”

The State Department has also come out against another 48 countries for failing to recognize LGBTQI+ citizens and 154 countries for not having ‘legal gender recognition,’” according to the report.

“I think the American taxpayers would be very shocked to know that their hard-earned tax dollars are funding some of these programs, especially when this is not a settled issue in the United States, this is very hotly contested, its divisive and we’re still waging our own cultural battles on these issues, so why are we exporting all of these problems to other countries,” Del Turco said.

The White House and the State Department did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.