The U.S. State Department: Recklessly Coercing Other Nations to Promote Radical Transgenderism — Six Things You Should Know

The culture war in the U.S. is accelerating rapidly.

In its obsessive promotion of transgenderism, the radical Left has lost its collective mind.

And now they want to export their transgender ideology abroad and force other nations — through coercive policies — to support their LGBTQI+ agenda.

And the Biden administration — with U.S. State Department Secretary Antony Blinken acting as its chief spokesman — is leading the charge.

Here are 6 things you should know:

1. In June 2022, President Biden signed Executive Order 14075.

This Executive Order (EO) instructs federal government agencies to do whatever they can to stop “conversion therapy” for people identifying themselves as LGBTQI+.

This EO was a reaction to Republican-controlled states passing laws such as Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Act, which prohibited public schools from teaching kids about gender confusion below the 4th grade level.

Those who objected to Florida’s law — including Disney CEO at the time, Bob Chapek — mischaracterized the law as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill.

2. After signing EO 14075, President Biden appointed Jessica Stern as Special Envoy to Advance the Human Rights of LGBTQI+ Persons.

This position was created by the Obama administration but was left unfilled during the Trump administration.

Jessica Stern was previously the executive director of Outright Action International, an LGBTQI+ advocacy organization at the United Nations headquarters in New York.

This organization has borrowed arguments opposing “conversion therapy” for sexual orientation and has applied them unscientifically, without evidence, to gender identity.

Studies have consistently shown that cross-gender identification in children is a passing phase for the vast majority of children who experience it. Yet this fact hasn’t stopped politicians and bureaucrats from taking advantage of public ignorance about the difference between sexual orientation and gender identity.

3. In August 2022, Secretary of State Antony Blinken issued a memo enforcing Biden’s EO 14075.

Blinken’s memo defines “conversion therapy” as any effort to “suppress or change an individual’s … gender identity.” According to the memo, these efforts include:

• Electric shock
• Corrective rape
• Talk therapy

Notice the clear implication. Using psychotherapy to help a child who is experiencing distress about his or her changing body feel more comfortable about those changes is considered by the U.S. State Department to be no different from using electric shock treatments to “liberate” gays and lesbians from their same-sex sexual attractions.

4. Medical authorities in Sweden, Finland and the U.K. in the past two years have concluded that evidence for pediatric “gender affirming care” is extremely weak.

These countries believe that hormonal and surgical intervention in children is experimental.

Sweden has banned gender-altering surgery for minors.

Finland and Sweden are now instructing doctors who treat minors to employ talk therapy first – and to prescribe “affirming” drugs only in extreme situations, if ever.

5. The Blinken memo effectively turns American embassies and consulates into global “gender-affirming” spies.

As part of their annual Human Rights Report, American embassies are being instructed to submit “robust information on the so-called ‘conversion therapy’ practices” of host countries.

Jessica Stern’s office will then create action plans to combat unacceptable practices using foreign policy and foreign assistance clubs to coerce submission.

6. The new Biden-Blinken “human rights” policy will cause immeasurable tangible damage.

First, bullying other countries into not allowing talk therapy for children and teenagers who are experiencing distress over their developing bodies will harm gay youth.

Distress over gender nonconformity is a very common phase of gay and lesbian youth development, according to research and clinical experience. If these teenagers are prohibited from talking about their feelings with empathetic counselors, they will resort to radical hormone therapy – and some will opt for gender transition surgery.

Second, making “gender affirming care” a foreign policy requirement will dilute, if not contradict, America’s broader commitment to human rights. For example, are foreign leaders supposed to believe that Sweden urging its psychologists to help kids feel comfortable in their own bodies is just as perverse as communist China’s persecution of its Uyghur minority, or Venezuela’s use of detentions and torture against government dissidents, or the Taliban’s oppression of women and girls?

Third, what happens when a teenager in a poor country begins hormone therapy or has gender-transition surgery and serious complications occur? The risk of complications is high in developing countries lacking access to specially trained doctors with adequate medical equipment. How is this serving the health needs and promoting the well-being of transgender-identified people?

In 2009, Barack Obama began his presidency by apologizing to the world for American arrogance in foreign policy. He said, “America does not presume to know what is best for everyone.”

The new Biden-Blinken push for Western allies to promote and encourage transgenderism says just the opposite.

If the Biden administration makes U.S. economic and cultural cooperation with other Western nations contingent on their promoting medical gender-transition – contrary to the judgment of experts in those countries – then cultural arrogance and imperialism will be back at the forefront of American foreign policy.

What do you think? Email me at craig@craighuey.com.

Read another article here: Company Stands Up for Women, Condemns Radical Transgenderism