Queering Foreign Policy

As I note above, the Rainbow Reich enjoys the loyalty of elites across the West. But it is first and foremost America’s project. So argues Helen Andrews in a survey of the central role of gay rights in American foreign policy (“Our LGBT Empire: Why is it America’s business to queer the Donbass?,” The American Conservative). In a 2011 speech, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton intoned, “Gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights,” and she promised to “use all the tools of American diplomacy, including the potent enticement of foreign aid, to promote gay rights around the world.” Her promise has been fulfilled. The U.S. unstintingly promotes the LGBTQ agenda.

These efforts have met with resistance. Outside of North America, Western Europe, Australia, and Latin America, the LGBTQ agenda is not popular. Asian countries are not keen to adopt the Rainbow flag. The Chinese government often cracks down on gay activists, deeming their aspirations contrary to China’s family values. Only Taiwan has legalized gay marriage, in the face of popular opposition, as dictated by its Constitutional Court. (In a 2018 referendum, 72 percent voted to restore the understanding of marriage as between one man and one woman.) With the exception of South Africa, African and Islamic countries are actively hostile to the Rainbow Reich. Last October, the Supreme Court of India refused to impose gay marriage on the nation, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has inveighed against the “urban, elitist views” behind the push for LGBTQ rights.

America’s crusade to expand the Rainbow Reich has had geopolitical consequences. Nearly ten years ago, I reflected on the ways in which Vladimir Putin was positioning himself as the moral leader of an anti-Western coalition (“Global Culture Wars,” April 2014). Early in the 2010s, Russia passed a law restricting “propaganda promoting non-traditional sexual relations.” In subsequent years, Putin often presented himself as a defender of traditional values. He continues to do so.

Putin is a clever operator. He can see that a great deal of the world resents America’s cultural imperialism, which is evident wherever the Rainbow flag is waved. In 2014, when Russia was hosting the Winter Olympics, the Human Rights Campaign gave $100,000 to the LGBTQ movement in that country. In recent years, American money flowed into Chinese gay advocacy groups until they were shut down by the Chinese government. Under the Biden administration, the U.S. government allocates more than $2 billion annually to promote “gender equity and equality” worldwide, a rubric that includes LGBTQ rights. It’s not an exaggeration to say that nearly the entire gay rights movement in Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, and the Islamic world is astroturfed by American money, whether it comes from U.S. government grants or straight from the pockets of wealthy donors, whose efforts are subsidized by our tax code, with its scheme of deductions for charitable donations.

Putin’s decision to position himself as the leader of a global moral majority has paid off. The Human Rights Campaign’s website features a map of the globe. The countries that allow gay marriage are highlighted in red. Outside of Latin America, they are largely the same countries that have joined the American-led sanctions regime established to counter Russia after its invasion of Ukraine. Those countries not allowing gay marriage have largely refused to participate in the sanctions regime. India has many reasons to maintain commercial ties with Russia, not the least of which are its energy needs. But the prospect of being lectured to by American diplomats and watching the money flow to gay activists undoubtedly plays a role as well.

And then there are the facts on the ground, which don’t dispose world leaders to join the Rainbow Reich. As Andrews observes:

Even many places that are inclined to be chill about private acts between adults balk at how far America is taking things. In America, tens of thousands of people cut off their breasts or genitals every year trying to change their sex. Judges tell parents they will lose custody if they don’t let their children be castrated. Rising STD rates among gay men have led the CDC to approve the continuous use of antibiotics as a prophylactic (DoxyPEP), even though this will surely result in antibiotic-resistant superbugs. Our birthrates are collapsing, and almost half of the children we do have are out of wedlock. There are lots of reasons other countries might look at us and think maybe we don’t have our sexual norms exactly right.

It’s never pleasant to be pushed around by a superpower. It’s more galling to be cattle-prodded toward the Rainbow Reich’s evident dysfunctions.