Biden will advance global LGBTQ+ rights

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.

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.

Premises

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."

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The premise reproduces campaign platform language without analysis, and the commitments are stated at a level of generality that admits almost any implementation. Placing human rights 'at the center' of foreign engagement has been asserted by administrations of both parties while the practice has varied considerably. [Rejecting P2] Foreign-policy leverage on this question is weaker than the premise assumes. The states where the abuses are most severe are frequently ones the US has strategic or energy interests in accommodating, and conditioning aid on rights outcomes has a mixed record — in several cases prompting governments to portray local organisations as foreign-directed, which raises the risk to the activists the policy is meant to support. [Rejecting P3] The legislative commitment is the weakest link. Enacting a bill requires majorities that a president does not control, and citing a measure 'currently before the House' as evidence of what will happen mistakes introduction for passage. [Rejecting C] The counter-argument on record disputes the record behind the pledges, pointing to decades of earlier positions and arguing that support arrived late relative to the shift already under way. The conclusion also assumes a single issue determines a vote, which the question's own framing does not require. (The counter is a block quotation from an unnamed source, which makes its particular characterisations difficult to verify.)