SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The Obama administration's
declaration that it plans to use foreign assistance, international diplomacy
and political asylum to promote gay rights abroad is a momentous step that
could dangerously backfire if not pursued with delicacy and an appreciation of
how the challenges faced by gays and lesbians vary by nation, human rights
activists said.
President Barack Obama, in a memorandum to
executive departments, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, during a
speech before the U.N. Human Rights Council, issued a coordinated denunciation
Tuesday of anti-gay discrimination, stating that equal treatment of gay,
lesbian and transgender people was an explicit U.S. foreign policy goal.
The White House said the twin moves represented the
U.S. government's first comprehensive strategy to combat sexual
orientation-based human rights abuses around the world. Gay rights groups
cheered the actions, noting that gays and lesbians can be arrested, tortured
and even executed in some countries.
Wayne Besen, founder of Truth Wins Out, a group
that monitors religious organizations with anti-gay views, listed Russia,
Nigeria, Cameroon, Uganda, Iran and Zimbabwe among the nations that had
recently "declared war on sexual minorities" and said that he hoped
they would be chastened by the administration's blunt talk.
"This was one of those times where our nation
demonstrated true international leadership and made me incredibly proud to be
an American," Besen said. "There were no carefully crafted and focus
grouped code words that sugarcoated the abuses — just the honest truth spoken
from the heart."
Other activists focused on gay rights
internationally were more restrained in their praise. Neil Grungas, founder of
the San Francisco-based organization for Refuge, Asylum and Migration, which
represents gay asylum-seekers, said it was critical for the administration to
secure allies on every continent to avoid looking like it was imposing American
values on parts of the world that view the West with mistrust or hostility.
Recalling how large demonstrations broke out in
Pakistan in June after staff at the U.S. Embassy held a gay pride celebration
there, he said that Obama's sincere commitment to improving the gay rights
picture globally could inadvertently make life worse for gays and lesbians
abroad.
"This cannot be seen as a U.S.-only issue
because at the end of the day that would be counter-productive," said
Grungas, who was in the audience for Clinton's speech. "In countries where
U.S. moral leadership is not high and where increasingly Western values are
negative ... there is a real danger people can use this issue and say, 'No, we
are cleaning up here, we are going to reject this American imposition of
decay.'"
In his presidential memo, Obama directed the State
Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development and other agencies to
make sure U.S. diplomacy and foreign assistance helps gays and lesbians who are
facing human rights violations. He also ordered U.S. agencies to protect
vulnerable gay and lesbian refugees and asylum seekers.
But the directive does not make foreign aid
contingent on a nation's gay rights record or include specific sanctions for
poor performers, making the policy more of a moral challenge to other
governments than a threat.
"The struggle to end discrimination against
lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender persons is a global challenge, and one
that is central to the United States' commitment to promoting human
rights," Obama said in a statement.
Clinton's audience in Geneva included diplomats
from Arab, African and other nations where homosexuality is criminalized or
where brutality and discrimination against gay and transgender people is
tolerated or encouraged. Many of the ambassadors in the audience responded with
stony faces and rushed out of the room as soon as she finished speaking.
In unusually strong language, the secretary of
state compared the struggle for gay equality to difficult passages toward
women's rights and racial equality, and she said a country's cultural or
religious traditions are no excuse for discrimination.
"Gay people are born into and belong to every
society in the world," she said. "Being gay is not a Western
invention. It is a human reality."
Clinton also catalogued international abuses such
as targeted killings of gays, "corrective rape" of lesbians or forced
hormone treatments. She likened the targeting of gays for mistreatment to
"honor killings" of women, widow-burning or female genital
mutilation, examples of practices the U.S. decries but has not penalized
friends including Afghanistan for carrying out.
"Some people still defend those practices as
part of a cultural tradition," she said. "But violence toward women
isn't cultural; it's criminal."
Neither Clinton nor Obama named any individual
countries with especially poor records on gay rights, although an annual State
Department accounting of global human rights has cited abuses by such friends
as Saudi Arabia.
Scott Long, former director of the Lesbian, Gay,
Bisexual, and Transgender Rights Program at Human Rights Watch, said he was interested
in watching the administration translate its broad statement of principle into
a practical action plan that considers different countries' views toward both
gay people and the U.S.
"I would like to see them think strategically
about what would work best to support activism on the ground," Long said
in an interview from Egypt, where he was meeting with local gay rights
activists. "It's going to differ from country to country based on that
country's relationship with the United States. There are places where an
embrace from the U.S. could be the kiss of death for a social movement."
Jessica Stern, acting director of the International
Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission in New York, said the administration
was wise not to tie gay rights to the provision or withdrawal of foreign aid
because doing so could set lesbian and gay people up as scapegoats. Instead,
the U.S. could assist gay rights groups with necessities like rent, salaries or
an escape route from persecution, Stern said.
"If a grass-roots organization doesn't have
access to government ministers, maybe what they have is the police showing up
at their doorstep every day," she said. "That's when they need the
U.S. government to communicate with their allies in a foreign country, but the
question is how to do it right, how can you do it discreetly?"
Gearan reported from Geneva. Associated Press
writer Julie Pace in Washington contributed to this report.
Copyright
2011 The Associated Press.
