On December 6, President Obama issued a memorandum stating that he was “directing all agencies engaged abroad to ensure that U.S. diplomacy and foreign assistance promote and protect the human rights of LGBT persons,” an initiative that includes combating criminalization of LGBT status by foreign governments and enhancing efforts to protect LGBT asylum seekers.
WorldNetDaily's Bob Unruh, who is apparently its correspondent from Bizarro World, offered this, um, unique interpretation of the memo in a December 7 article headlined “Obama offers plan for U.S. to be global LGBT sex cop: Wants to import homosexuals with special asylum privileges”:
The Obama administration has announced it intends to make the United States the global sex cop, with plans to try to intervene in the workings of other nations where homosexuality is not promoted as well as plans to create special provisions for homosexuals and those with other lifestyle choices to gain special admittance to the U.S.
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Specifically, his plan is to try to intervene in other nation's internal operations where the homosexual lifestyle choice is at risk. That would happen through U.S. government's agencies that would “strengthen existing efforts to effectively combat the criminalization by foreign governments of LGBT status or conduct and to expand efforts to combat discrimination, homophobia, and intolerance on the basis of LGBT status or conduct.”
Further, special access to the United States needs to be provided to any “LGBT” person, Obama explains.
Contrary to Unruh's claim that “any 'LGBT' person” will get “special access to the United States,” according to the memorandum, it specifically states that “LGBT refugees and asylum seekers have equal access to protection and assistance, particularly in countries of first asylum.”
Unruh's suggestion that trying to get other countries to not persecute LGBT people is the same as “promoting” homosexuality and serving as the “global sex cop” is another Bizarro World interpretation. He also resorts to false anti-gay talking points in referring to homosexuality as a “lifestyle choice” and portraying the Obama administration's efforts as “interven[ing] in other nation's internal operations where the homosexual lifestyle choice is at risk” and “enhancements ... for those who support the alternative sexual lifestyle choices.”
In his article, Unruh quotes Peter LaBarbera, leader of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, which the Southern Poverty Law Center designates as a hate group. (LaBarbera: “Who knew when Reagan was talking about being a shining city on the hill the city would turn out to be Sodom?”) Unruh also quotes anti-gay activists Matt Barber (“How dare we, the U.S., export our decline in morality to other nations?”), and Randy Thomasson (“Homosexuality has never shown evidence that it is inherited, or has a genetic or biological origin”). Unruh quotes no activist speaking in favor of the initiative.
Interestingly, though, two of these activists are on record as claiming to be appalled that other countries advocate putting gays to death.
LaBarbera has insisted that his organization "is clearly on record opposing draconian penalties for homosexuality like those imposed by jihadist Islamic radicals." (However, he asked regarding Uganda's proposed anti-gay law that would permit the death penalty for homosexuality, “what is it that qualifies the United States of America to lecture the Ugandans about homosexuality?”)
Barber, in a WND column, came to the defense of fellow anti-gay activist Scott Lively for his links to the proposed Ugandan law, claiming he "has been falsely maligned by leftist groups and media-types like Rachel Maddow, for supposedly supporting the death penalty for homosexual behavior -- a patently false charge."
If LaBarbera and Barber think it's abhorrent to put people to death for being gay, why would they also find it abhorrent that the United States is to encouraging other countries to get rid of such laws and provide asylum for LGBT people who are threatened by those penalties? They can't have it both ways.