Human rights for all

I’m old enough to remember when human rights was the domain of Democrats and Republicans were hawks who always put war and the economy ahead of the human condition.

That’s a stereotype nearly lost to history now. There’s a reason you can’t think up the human rights accomplishments of the Obama era: They lie buried under a rainbow banner.

In the wake of subverting “human rights” with “gay rights” are human rights violations so numerous we Americans have grown numb—unaccompanied minors flooding our border with Mexico; Americans beheaded by ISIS; women and girls by the thousands captured by Islamic jihadists; Syrian children crushed by barrel bombs; migrants perishing in the sea by the thousands, and walking in single-file lines over Europe’s country roads.

Under President Obama the United States reached a sweeping nuclear agreement with Iran then stood by as the Islamic regime imprisoned more church and opposition leaders. It normalized relations with Cuba without an accounting for its political prisoners. It recognized Myanmar’s military government and ended Clinton-era sanctions, while Myanmar’s army carries out a brutal campaign against the Rohingya, a Muslim minority, bombs churches, and on Christmas Eve “disappeared” two Catholic priests.

“Gay rights are human rights and human rights are gay rights,” declared Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in 2011, as the State Department launched the Global Equality Fund, which has spent over $33 million in 80 countries to promote an LGBT agenda. That’s just front money for a top-to-bottom overhaul, used to promote Intersex Awareness Day and to berate under-developed countries that still have laws on the books against homosexuality and sodomy.

“We have made gender equality a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy,” Secretary of State John Kerry wrote in a Jan. 5 exit memo. Kerry highlighted naming a special envoy for LGBTI rights and passage of three related UN resolutions. He said nothing about U.S. failure to win passage of a UN genocide resolution against ISIS.

“We have made gender equality a cornerstone of U.S. foreign policy,” —John Kerry

Such prioritizing has human implications.

Last August, according to White House National Security Advisor Susan Rice, the State Department organized an “emergency call” with the U.S. ambassador in Uganda within 45 minutes of learning a gay rights activist and about 20 others—all Ugandans—had been detained by police during a Pride Week fashion show at a Kampala nightclub. The ambassador formally protested the detentions, which lasted two hours.

At the same time, parents of Americans taken hostage have testified repeatedly to State Department foot-dragging. Diane Foley said her family “had to beg” the government for information on her son James, the U.S. journalist beheaded in Syria. The State Department actually warned the Foleys they would be prosecuted if they raised money to pay ransom.

The White House repeatedly denied requests by Kayla Mueller’s parents to meet with the president, and then waited nearly two months to give a go-ahead on a plan to rescue her and other hostages held in Syria. U.S. Special Forces missed the hostages by days, though DNA evidence confirmed Mueller had been at the site.

The urgency to reorient a U.S. human rights agenda away from its narrow LGBT focus seems lost on likely incoming Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and on many in Congress.

Tillerson, former president of the Boy Scouts, pushed to open Scout troops to openly gay youth. In nine hours of Senate testimony, lawmakers never asked about his views on State’s LGBT agenda, and he repeatedly dodged questions about wider human rights issues.

The State Department needs a dramatic inner detox, as LGBT-centric thinking has seeped into every pore of funding policy, draining a commitment to other causes.

The UN and Obama White House reluctance to address the rampant ISIS targeting of Christians, one former diplomat told me, stems from the “staff commitment to and advocacy for the LGBT agenda, which sees Christianity as an obstacle to be confronted.” Ending that sort of bias is one reason so many American evangelicals voted for Donald Trump. But it’s not at all clear whether Rex Tillerson sees the problem.