Former Biden diplomat shares the global impact of Trump targeting LGBTQ rights

Jessica Stern: Including LGBTQI+ issues explicitly in US foreign policy is a pretty new concept, but it’s an incredibly important one. First of all, I want to make clear I didn’t have to reach out for people to work with. Ambassadors across the US government, colleagues across US departments and agencies and other countries were actively reaching out because they saw LGBTQI issues as a public policy priority.

And some people may ask, “Isn’t this a niche issue or a marginal population?” But I would argue that the test of the rule of law is not how it benefits the most privileged, but how it benefits the most marginalized. And so, when we look at the treatment of LGBTQI+ people, it’s like a test of whether the systems are working for everyone.

I think I would start by just acknowledging that a big focus of my work was fighting violence against LGBTQI people around the world — whether it’s being beaten by a partner, being subjected to domestic violence, mob violence, so-called corrective rape, so-called conversion therapy practices, even up to murder and homicide. But unfortunately, while crimes against LGBTQI+ people are some of the highest in the world, they’re also some of the most overlooked and underinvestigated.

So, a big part of what we did was we focused on ensuring that there was a stronger response by police and that public safety took into account LGBTQI+ people. I can think of one country where a young, 19-year-old trans woman was mysteriously found dead. We were able to reach out and to ensure that there was going to be an adequate investigation into her cause of death.

In 2023, the government of Uganda signed the Anti-Homosexuality Act into law. It’s widely considered to be one of the most far-reaching, extreme and anti-LGBTQI+ laws in the world. Just to give you an example: So-called serial offenders of homosexuality — so people like my wife and me — could be liable upon conviction for the death penalty. So-called promotion of homosexuality — whatever that means, but probably it means activism, expression, assembly, maybe even pride festivals — could be punished with up to 20 years in prison.

And we wouldn’t do anything without consulting Ugandan human rights activists and the communities most affected. But they were very clear in what they wanted. They wanted their government to be held accountable, and they wanted this law to be struck down. So, while I wish I could say that the law was struck down — in fact, it wasn’t, it’s still on the books — It hasn’t been fully implemented. And while not being fully implemented is not what I would consider to be a success, the fact that LGBTQI+ people are being rounded up en masse is partially because governments around the world, including the US, made clear that there would be serious reputational and economic consequences if Uganda took such draconian steps.

I would say that one of my greatest sources of pride as the US special envoy was seeing how many governments around the world wanted to work with my office, including unlikely suspects and in every single region of the world. There is this misnomer that LGBTQI+ issues are priorities in Stockholm and the Hague and Buenos Aires and Washington, DC, but countries across the global south and global east don’t care. It’s just not true.

Some of my most-frequent partners and the most-regular partnerships that I had were governments that, frankly, are in transition, that are looking to improve their economies, improve their reputation on the regional and global stage, and actually see colonial-era sodomy laws that they still have on the books as holding them back. So yeah, I saw potential and progress in every region. I just wish we had more time to support those governments that wanted to do the right thing.

There’s no question that what happens in the US reverberates globally. And unfortunately, we’re already seeing consequences of the Trump administration’s actions. And every single day I get calls from community-based organizations that are having their funding cut off by the US government, which is causing them to stop emergency food provision, shelter and services for life-saving programs just because they’re doing it through the auspices of LGBTQI+ rights.

There is currently a 90-day pause on US foreign assistance, but we don’t believe that LGBTQI+ groups are going to make it through when foreign assistance restarts — in whatever form it takes. Because based on some estimates, the US government, in one form or another, supports roughly a third of the budget of the global LGBTQI+ rights movement per year. I wish that I could tell you that there are some philanthropists out there who can fill that hole, but nobody can fill the gap left by the US government.

I would say if I walk away from my phone for half an hour, I return to a laundry list of messages. I’m hearing from grassroots LGBTQI+ organizations around the world that find themselves in absolute panic and crisis. Unfortunately, because so many people — primarily at US aid, but also newly at the State Department itself have been furloughed, have been put on administrative leave, so many people have had their contracts terminated — when these organizations reach out to me, they’re doing so in many cases because when they call the US government, there’s no one to answer their call.

I believe very strongly that LGBTQI+ rights should be a bipartisan or nonpartisan issue. We’re not talking about a radical agenda. We’re talking about equality under the law. We’re talking about kids being able to go to school. We’re talking about everyone having a good-paying job. We’re talking about people being safe from violence.

I always have hope. And the truth is that even while some of the traditional leaders in this space have been pulling back, we’re seeing other governments moving forward. So, governments like Colombia, Germany, Japan, South Africa, Chile and others have really been demonstrating increased leadership on LGBTQI+ rights in recent years. So, it’s not the same as having a country with the US’s economic and political might at the table, but there certainly are a lot of governments that still care about these issues and will be doing their part.

They can’t drag me away. I’m starting out by just taking a breath. So, I’m teaching a course at Columbia this spring, getting inspired by the students there. And then, I think I need a moment to regroup. But I can tell you that one way or another, I’ll still be in the fight for justice and equality.