Biden Pushes Homosexual Marriage as a Binding Human Right

By | May 18, 2023

NEW YORK, May 19 (C-Fam) The Biden administration is pressing countries to adopt homosexual marriage as a human right. This new development comes during the latest cycles of the UN’s Universal Periodic Review.

U.S. officials called on the government of Serbia to “legalize same-sex unions” last week during the latest round of the process where governments criticize each other on questions of human rights. The Biden administration also called on Korea and Japan to “provide legal recognition of same-sex marriage.”

The Biden administration claims homosexual marriage or unions are required by human rights law “to guarantee equal protection under the law for members of same-sex couples.”

Promoting homosexual marriage abroad is unprecedented from any U.S. administration. Even the Obama administration, under Secretary Hillary Clinton, which declared LGBT issues a priority in U.S. foreign policy, did not promote homosexual marriage as a human right.

The Universal Periodic Review is a mechanism of the Human Rights Council to review the human rights record of every country on a rolling basis. The distinctive feature of the process is that it allows other countries to comment on the country under review.

In theory, countries under review should only be held accountable to human rights obligations that exist in agreed upon treaties, and that governments have agreed to. Inevitably, the process has become politicized as countries try to promote their preferred policies as human rights obligations.

Pressuring countries to adopt homosexual marriage is especially controversial because it is beyond the scope of any human rights obligations. No international human rights treaty requires countries to ratify homosexual marriages, let alone mentions homosexual relations. Traditional countries will see pressure from the U.S. government on an issue that is not internationally recognized as an unwarranted intrusion in their national affairs and an effort to politicize human rights.

Pressure on homosexual marriage at the Universal Periodic Review is part of a wider strategy to advance homosexual/trans issue in U.S. foreign policy.

The Biden administration also added homosexual marriage in the U.S. State Department’s 2022 Human Rights Report, for the first time. The widely read annual report reviews individual countries’ human rights record from a U.S. perspective.

The U.S. government also pressures countries and reports on their efforts to decriminalize homosexual conduct, adopt hate crimes and hate speech laws, let individuals who identify as transgender change their sex based on subjective self-identification, and ban any kind of psychological therapy to help individuals cope or overcome same-sex attraction and gender dysphoria, usually referred to as “conversion therapy.”

Both the report and the recommendations at the Human Rights Council are products of the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy Human Rights and Labor. This diplomatic pressure of the U.S. government is also backed by the U.S. foreign aid programs.

Last week, the U.S. Agency for International Development released an updated strategy for funding foreign groups that promote homosexual/trans issues and for addressing LGBT issues throughout USAID programs.

The strategy lays out proposals to make homosexual/trans promotion more systematic in all U.S. foreign aid engagements. It proposes requiring all U.S. missions abroad to have a focal point for homosexual/trans issues and to collect data and report on LGBT issues. It also proposes that homosexual/trans issues are integrated in all USAID policies and programs through “gender analyses”—a bureaucratic process required by law for every USAID policy and program to analyze and measure the impact of policies and programs on women.

The Biden administration promotion of LGBT issues abroad is also encroaching on established funding streams, like HIV/AIDS funding, the largest single health item on the U.S. foreign aid budget with over $5 billion annually. According to publicly available data USAID supported the launch of the first-ever transgender clinic in India run by and for transgender individuals.

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