Gays/Trans Say Family Groups Threaten Democracy

By | 2026

UNITED NATIONS, May 22 (C-Fam) The UN LGBT Core Group — 46 mostly Western states— has warned that conservative pro-family groups are a global threat to democracy.

“We see threats to LGBTI rights alongside threats to democracy, because, as extensive research shows, a transnational network of conservative resistance has emerged to challenge LGBTI rights,” said Ari Shaw of the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law, one of the main speakers at an event sponsored by the LGBT Core Group at UN headquarters.

Shaw said pro-family groups were actively working to “co-opt international human rights law” and “using the very mechanisms built by liberal international organizations and the international community to organize and advance anti LGBTI norms at the global level and across countries in every region.”

Shaw labelled pro-family groups as “illiberal actors.” He argued that LGBTI rights are inherent to democracy and vice-versa. He showed two graphs ostensibly showing how a decline in LGBTI acceptance in Africa and Asia since the first decade of this century was associated with a decline in democratic values in the same regions (see graphs below).

Shaw did not ask if the decline in LGBTI acceptance might have been caused by the aggressive promotion of LGBTI issues by the Obama administration and European nations in the same time period. He did not consider this possibility at all, even though his graphs suggest this is a possible contributor.

Shaw’s graphs showed a dramatic dip in LGBTI acceptance in Africa and Asia, precisely in the period when Western nations aggressively began to push LGBT propaganda and add LGBTI conditions to foreign aid. Conversely, the graphs show only a slight, gradual decrease in democratic values over the same period across the world.

“By attacking LGBTI rights, this global network (of pro-family groups) undermines the liberal commitment to human rights principles of equality before the law, and that weakens international institutions and weaponizes democratic pluralism to create a more polarizing discourse that undermines the cohesion required for, and that serves democracy.”

Erika Hilton—a man who dresses as a woman and was elected as the first transgender congressman of Brazil—said that protecting LGBTI rights was a “premise of democratic governance.”

Other speakers, including governments that spoke at the event, lamented the work of “anti-rights” and “anti-gender” groups at the United Nations but celebrated the recent ouster of the pro-family government of Viktor Orbán in Hungary in elections last month. They claimed that LGBTI issues were a determining factor in the elections, even though the Tisza Party of Hungary’s new president deliberately avoided all culture war issues in the election.

The event showed how LGBTI issues are entrenched in UN policy as a long-term bureaucratic project. This rhetoric on democracy and LGBTI issues was first brought to the UN system as part of a Biden administration resolution in the General Assembly that made “indirect” LGBTI discrimination a barrier to participation in democratic elections. Even though the Trump administration declined to bring the resolution back to the General Assembly, the ideological framework it set up is still operative in UN programs.

Similarly, the LGBTI Core group operates independently of the political reality of countries that are members of the group. The group includes Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Croatia, Italy, and other countries that have laws and constitutions that protect marriage and are run by conservative pro-family governments. A delegate of Chile presided over the event even though Chile’s new President, Antonio Kast, ran on a pro-family platform.

Williams Institute Graphs presented by Ari Shaw

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