The citizens of several countries are pushing back against President Obama’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender foreign policy imperative. Leaders in El Salvador launched a website on “Obama’s Corrupting Foreign Policy” and are asking the U.S. Senate to reject Obama’s nominee for ambassador to their country.
President Obama announced in December that the promotion of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) behavior is a top foreign policy priority, even for the U.S. military overseas. At the same time, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a high-profile speech at the UN equating LGBT status with religion. The State Department told ambassadors worldwide to recognize “gay pride month,” and it released a list of “accomplishments” including the fact that a U.S. ambassador had published an OpEd promoting the LGBT agenda on behalf of the United States .
Mari Carmen Aponte, a temporary ambassador to El Salvador, published an essay conflating disapproval of homosexuality with “brutal hostility” and “aggression” by “those who promote hatred.” It is Salvadorans’ “responsibility” to become advocates for LGBT issues and “to inform our neighbors and friends about what it means to be lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender,” she wrote. The OpEd ran in a major Salvadoran newspaper in June, igniting a firestorm by offended citizens.
More than three-dozen leaders in Latin American countries rebuked the ambassador. In a declaration in a Salvadoran newspaper, they accused the U.S. representative of “disregarding our profound Christian values, rooted in natural law,” by trying to “impose . . . a new vision of foreign and bizarre values, completely alien to our moral fiber, intending to disguise this as ‘human rights’” with “an air of superiority.” The only thing they agreed with, they stated, is that violence should be repudiated “just the same as against skinny, fat, tall or short” people.
The leaders also sent a letter to U.S. Senators protesting Aponte’s appointment. At a congressional hearing in December, Senator Jim DeMint read their complaint and criticized Aponte’s “presuming to represent the views of all Americans” in her OpEd. “I would like to apologize to the Salvadoran people on behalf of the United States and reassure them that most Americans share their values,” DeMint said.
Salvadorans perceived that the assault extended beyond Aponte and launched a website last week exposing “Obama’s Corrupting Foreign Policies.” It chronicles the campaign by US officials to promote homosexuality, and the counter-campaign by Latin Americans.
The Washington Times, a major Washington, DC newspaper, published a letter from Latin American leaders warning that the aggressive promotion of homosexual rights constitutes a “war on religion.” The Obama administration has placed people in other countries “on the front lines,” the letter said, and is “demeaning our culture and insulting our values.” The leaders wrote, “We support the legitimate human rights of all our citizens. We do not support made up ‘homosexual rights’. We do not appreciate the ambassador from another country coming in and preaching to us. We intend to defend our moral values and preserve our families.”
In Pakistan, the US embassy hosted an LGBT “pride celebration” in June which provoked protests in several cities. A leader of one of the rallies said, “America has unleashed a storm of immoral values” and “we’ll resist at all costs.” The U.S. ambassador to Serbia promoted a homosexual rights march in that country last October which led to riots with an explicitly anti-Western tone.
