Biden will advance global LGBTQ+ rights
Homosexuality is illegal in 73 countries, and punishable by death in some of them. Biden will work to legalize being LGBTQ+ abroad.
LGBTQ
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Context
As President, Biden will restore the United States’ standing as a global leader defending LGBTQ+ rights and development and work closely with our partners and like-minded governments to ensure that violence and discrimination against LGBTQ+ individuals do not go unchecked. Within his first week in office, President Biden will issue a Presidential Memorandum prioritizing his administration’s support for LGBTQ+ human rights and development worldwide.
The Argument
Biden will:
Ensure that human rights are at the center of our engagement with the world.
Advance an inclusive human rights agenda that promotes LGBTQ+ rights by integrating them within a broad human rights agenda.
Use the full range of our diplomatic tools and foreign assistance to protect and advance human rights and development, and actively combat violence and discrimination.
Combat sexual orientation and gender identity biases.
Stand with local civil society. Under a Biden Administration, foreign assistance from USAID and the State Department will prioritize strengthening the voice, capacity, and agency of local LGBTQ+ organizations and activists.
Evaluate programming to ensure that investments are reaching the intended population and making a difference.
Work with Congress to enact legislation – like the GLOBE Act currently before the House—which will permanently make upholding LGBTQ+ rights a priority of the foreign policy of the United States, including addressing discrimination and violence against LGBTQ+ individuals. [1]
Counter arguments
"Biden’s actual record, spanning over 40 years in Washington, instead shows a politician who spent his entire career attacking gay people and the LGBT community. From his persistent opposition to gay marriage, to continued support for regimes that murder homosexuals, and even suggesting gay people might be “security risks” as federal employees, Biden’s open support for LGBT rights arrived very late, even among Democrats, and well after great advances toward LGBT equality had already been made."