C-FAM Opposes Trump Admin Advocacy for Global Decriminalization of Homosexuality

Austin Ruse speaks at 2015 conference on sexual orientation and gender identity in international law

Many of Trump’s anti-LGBTQ Religious Right boosters have kept quiet about the administration’s stated intention to advocate for the decriminalization of homosexuality around the world, but not C-FAM. The group, which works to mobilize opposition at the United Nations to any international recognition of LGBTQ rights, headlined an article in its weekly newsletter “White House Confirms Global Campaign to Protect Homosexual Acts.”

C-FAM is upset that the White House tweeted last week in support of an initiative to decriminalize homosexuality that was first announced by Richard Grenell, the openly gay U.S. ambassador to Germany, last February.

More from C-FAM:

Homosexuality is a controversial topic in the UN General Assembly. Over 70 countries outlaw homosexual acts or even the promotion of homosexuality. These governments say that all individuals are entitled to the same human rights protections, including individuals who identify as LGBT, but that homosexual acts are not protected by human rights law.

They may find the Trump administration’s campaign inconsistent with President Trump’s statements in the General Assembly about respect for sovereignty and family values.

Homosexual acts, like all nonmarital sexual activity, is not protected by internationally agreed human rights law. International law only protects sexual autonomy in the context of the equal right of men and women to marry and found a family.

As Right Wing Watch has reported, C-FAM and its leader Austin Ruse eagerly work with the world’s most repressive regimes in order to resist recognition of LGBTQ rights and to preserve the right of those governments to enforce “traditional” views of family, sexuality and gender. In a note in this week’s “Friday Fax,” Ruse criticized Trump administration officials directly, saying that while C-FAM opposes the death penalty for homosexuality, it is not up to the U.S. to “regulate the sexual norms of other societies.” From Ruse’s “Dear Colleague” note:

If President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Secretary Pompeo are serious about defending the unborn child at the UN, religious freedom around the world, and promoting unalienable rights, then they will rethink this new policy of promoting homosexual acts internationally.

Something will have to give. It is a plain fact that promoting the LGBT agenda will harm the life issues, religious freedom and undermine unalienable rights.

While we at C-Fam oppose the death penalty for homosexual acts, it should not to be up the United States to regulate the sexual norms of other societies. We are risking major advances in life and religious freedom for the wishes of a single gay U.S. Ambassador in Germany, someone I still count as a friend.

Meanwhile, Eagle Forum announced its opposition a few weeks ago to the Global Respect Act, which passed out of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The bill, as described by Eagle Forum, would impose “sanctions on foreigners guilty of human rights violations against ‘LGBTQ’ foreigners outside the United States.” But that’s not all, said Eagle Forum, which charged that the bill “contains broad language that can be interpreted in a manner that imposes sanctions on any foreigner who publicly expresses disapproval of homosexuality and transgender ideology through the ‘flagrant denial of the right to life, liberty, or the security of the individual.’” Claimed Eagle Forum, “This is a threat to a person’s religious freedom and freedom of speech.”