ANALYSIS: For Western Countries Freedom of Religion Ends Where LGBT Rights Begin

By and Stefano Gennarini, J.D. | November 2, 2023

NEW YORK, November 3 (C-Fam) Western governments expressed support for religious freedom in the General Assembly last week even as they attacked traditional religious beliefs about marriage and family around the world.

In the social policy committee of the General Assembly last week, the European Union promised “strong support” for religious freedom and said, “everybody has a right to believe and not to believe.” The United States agreed and encouraged governments to work with people of faith as “partners.”

These statements cannot be taken at face value because for years, Western governments have supported only one kind of religious freedom, and it is the kind that celebrates and promotes homosexual/trans issues.

Indeed, the same Western delegations that expressed support for freedom of religion in the General Assembly also support efforts to limit freedom of religion when it comes to homosexual/trans issues. They only partner with pro-homosexual/trans religious groups and try to streamline such policies internationally.

The UN human rights office recently called on governments to limit freedom of religion when religious leaders and groups oppose homosexual/trans issues. The report, covered by the Friday Fax earlier this year, called on governments to censor religious leaders with traditional beliefs. Moreover, the report calls for support of dissident religious groups that agitate against traditional beliefs about marriage and family. They want dissidents to change religions teachings from within.

That UN report was not mere rhetoric. It was fully backed by the U.S. government and EU officials, and it is based on dozens of already existing Western policies and programs that seek to control religion in order to promote homosexual/trans issues.

The U.S. development agency released a policy last month called “Building Bridges in Development: USAID’s Strategic Religious Engagement Policy,” which explicitly requires USAID’s religious partners to accept conditions related to homosexual/trans issues in their contracts. Such conditions have existed in USAID since the Obama administration and were continued during the Trump administration. Now the Biden administration has made it clear that there will be no allowance for religious groups that are not on board with the homosexual/trans agenda.

In 2020, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic the EU Commission adopted the first-ever EU-wide strategy for homosexual/trans issues, which included a sweeping set of social engineering measures to impose uniform policies across the European Union. It also promised to ramp up EU diplomatic and foreign aid efforts to promote homosexual/trans issues across the globe.

The European Union is a major contributor to projects that attack Christian leaders across Europe who oppose same-sex marriage. The EU funds ILGA-Europe, the leading European homosexual/transgender advocacy lobby. The group, notorious for refusing to condemn adult-child sex, recently attacked Orthodox priests and other faith leaders across Ukraine, Czechia, Slovakia, and Turkey who do not recognize same-sex unions and treat homosexual acts as sinful.

Europe’s political leaders are also behind attacks on the Catholic Church for opposing “gender ideology.” An EU parliament report said opposing “gender” is a “Catholic invention, with the Catholic Church as the chief advocate.” The report criticizes faithful Catholic groups for “portraying themselves as the real victims, as defenders of faith, versus intolerant cultural revolutionaries.”

The EU goes beyond simply condemning religious faith leaders who hold traditional beliefs about marriage and family. It also wants to influence and change religious beliefs.

A UN report published earlier this year  — with support from the EU — called on governments and foundations to support pro-same-sex marriage and pro-abortion faith leaders to “offer a practical counter to the tendency of anti-gender/pro-family actors to claim that they speak on behalf of entire faith communities and to weaponize religion as a tool to restrict rights to sexual and bodily autonomy.“

It seems that religious freedom is only for those on board with certain ideologies of the sexual left.

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