The Biden administration may be gearing up to bully the closest allies of the U.S. into conformity with its goal of a global ban on what it deceptively calls “conversion therapy” for “LGBTQI+” youth, if we are to believe what is claimed to be a leaked memo.
According to an article in City Journal by conservative writer Leor Sapir, an internal memo by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was leaked to Sapir. It laid out a global policy to implement Biden’s June 2022 Executive Order 14075. That order instructs federal agencies to enact policies aimed at stopping what it calls “conversion therapy” of “LGBTQI+” youth.
An article in the Post Millennial that cites Sapir’s piece says this:
[T]he directive would transform American embassies and consulates into “global ‘gender-affirming’ spies that would collect data on the host country and “submit robust information on the so-called ‘conversion therapy’ practices” back to Jessica Stern, who serves as Special Envoy to Advance the Human Rights of LGBTQI+ Persons.
When Biden appointed Stern just after issuing EO 14075 last June, he described the position as “critical to ensuring that US diplomacy and foreign assistance promote and protect the human rights of LGBTQI+ persons around the world.”
The Blinken memo describes Stern’s new role: Her office would receive so-called “conversion therapy” intelligence from foreign embassies and make it “part of the annual Human Rights Reports.” Those reports are to be used to create an “action plan to combat the practice across foreign policy and foreign assistance lines of effort.” Presumably this action plan would involve granting or denying funding to foreign countries to insure compliance, along with other strong-arm diplomacy.
This U.S. action to protect and even spread the practice of medicalizing children on the altar of transgenderism comes as medical authorities in nations that are our closest allies have taken steps to restrict these practices severely, if not ban them outright. The growing list includes medical authorities in Sweden, Finland, and the U.K. France and Australia may soon join them. The countries (and Florida) that have enacted these restrictions have done so on that basis of credible scientific data. In contrast, the Biden actions bucking the trend rely on poorly substantiated data put out by institutions clearly captured by gender identity ideologues.
Sapir writes:
The problem, for countries like Sweden, Finland, and the U.K., is that medical authorities in these places have concluded over the past two years that the evidence for pediatric “gender affirming care” is extremely weak and that, as a result, hormonal and surgical interventions are (as Finland’s COHERE put it) “experimental.” Sweden and Finland are now instructing clinicians who deal with minors to utilize an approach that emphasizes talk therapy as the first line of defense and “affirming” drugs only in extreme situations, if ever. Sweden has completely banned gender surgeries for minors—surgeries that are practiced in the United States . . .
In contrast to Sweden, Finland et al., the Biden administration has now put talk therapy aimed at helping confused kids sort out their feelings into the same category of inhumane horrors as shock therapy and other torturous aversion techniques – now rightly banned in the U.S. – intended to convert lesbians and gay men to heterosexuality.
Banning torture for having a “wrong” sexual orientation is in no way comparable to banning talk therapy for kids confused or distressed about what it means to be male or female according to current cultural norms.
Leor Sapir, who claims he received the leaked memo, tweeted this today:
Gender ideology is not a body of ideas about sex/gender. It is more like an attitude marked by a willingness to condone logical contradiction, intellectual incoherence, misrepresentation of science, and dishonesty when doing so serves one’s political needs.
WDI USA would agree, if not for the words “more like.” Gender identity ideology is all of those things. There is no nuance. Conservatives often get this wrong, because they fundamentally love gender itself.
Sapir’s claims about the existence and content of the memo leaked to him strike us as credible and consistent with known existing Biden policies. It appears unlikely that the Biden administration has the power to compel adherence to these harmful, dogma-driven policies. What is more likely is that the United States will be seen, with justification, as a global bully driven by an anti-scientific agenda that must be resisted by other nations in a united effort. The U.S. should be following the science, as Biden is fond of saying, and in this case also follow the lead of our closest international allies. The U.S. is in danger of being politically isolated because while other countries are moving to protect children, we insist that they maim them. WDI USA stands firmly in opposition to the Executive Order in question, the policies behind it, and any attempts to export these policies by any means.
