The Future of LGBTQ Rights is Not Looking Good
A global anti-LGBTQ alliance is growing, as conservative politicians roll back on LGBTQ rights
When Polish President Andrzej Duda won re-election for another five year term on July 13th, an internal groan echoed in many parts of the world. That is because Duda, a conservative from the Law and Justice Party (PiS), had used homophobia as a tool for his re-election. During his campaign, he voiced anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, including vowing to create “gay-free zones”, ban same-sex couples from adopting, and compared “LGBT ideology” to a form of brainwashing, and accusing LGBT people to be pedophiles.
The fact that Duda is now the leader of Poland for the next five years may make any LGBTQ person or ally cringe over what’s in store of that community in Poland. It is also a sign for things to come in regards to LGBTQ rights around the world, especially with the U.S. presidential election less than 90 days away.
While anti-LGBTQ politicians are nothing new, the fact that they seem to be making a comeback is startling to some. But what some people ought to be aware is that right-wing politicians around the world are coming together to fight for what they call traditional values and family rights.
It all starts back in 1995 when two Russian intellectuals invited Allan Carlson, a former history professor and member of the Reagan administration, to Moscow to discuss the birth decline in their country. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia’s population fell drastically, and continues to fall. What the three men discussed, considered as the “demographic winter”, led to a movement to target liberal values in order to bring back the traditional family (one man, one woman, and their biological children), and thus increase the birth rate, particularly for white people. While those liberal values included feminism, divorce and the sexual revolution, the LGBTQ community was also on their target list. From there, the World Congress of Families was developed, and held its first meeting in Prague in 1997. Over time, anti-LGBTQ attitudes would dominate the WCF, often using pseudo-science and debunked claims to fuel their anti-LGBTQ agenda.
In recent years, high-profiled conservative leaders in Europe began making speeches at WCF’s annual conferences. Former Polish president Lech Kaczynski, whom Human Rights Watch wrote an open letter, urging him to respect LGBTQ rights in 2007, opened the conference that same year in Warsaw, and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban made a speech when he opened the 2014 conference in Budapest. Both voiced their fears and dismay over their countries, and Europe’s, low birth-rate.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has an well-detailed report on WCF’s background and political influence, the World Congress of Families has allies all over the world, but it’s biggest alliance is with Eastern European leaders. According to the SPLC, this is because of “the enthusiasm for its “demographic winter” and “natural family” ideas.” And behind all those leaders holding the WCF in their countries, are their meetings with Russian oligarchs with strong ties to the Kremlin…and Vladimir Putin.
“For Russia the fight against LGBTI-rights is not a religious or conservative fight,” says Remy Bonny, a Belgian political scientist and LGBTQ activist. “It is an inherent part of their strategy to undermine liberal democracy, to undermine the EU and to undermine the US.”
It appears to be working. Last year, the alliance between Hungary, Poland, Brazil and the U.S. became more noticeable. On the Hungarian side, this alliance seems to be in the hands of Katalin Novak, the Hungarian State Secretary for Family Affairs & International Affairs, who also has close ties with the Russian intelligence organization, RISS, which might have interfered with the 2016 elections in the United States and Brexit that same year. She was also a keynote speaker during the 2019 WCF summit in Verona, Italy, along with Matteo Salvini, the Italian deputy prime minister, and a few other members of the Italian government.
In September 2019, Novak hosted a summit in which conservative leaders from around the world gathered to discuss the “demographic winter”. Among those invited were two Americans: Senator Andy Harris and Senior Advisor at the Department for Health and Human Services (HHS) Valerie Huber.
Then in November, Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, Joe Grogan, went to Budapest to attend the International Conference on Christian Persecution. He also met with Novak, who tweeted about their meeting, saying, “In addition to helping persecuted Christians around the world, #Hungary & #USA can also strengthen cooperation in defending family values.”
Later in early December, Novak herself was in D.C. for the 2nd International Conference on Family Policy, which was hosted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Embassies of Hungary and Brazil (Brazilian MP Antônio Dos Santos sits on board with Novak at the Political Network of Values, which includes many leaders from Latin America). According to the event’s website, speakers from Poland also took part, and Joe Grogan was there to talk “about the Trump Administration’s efforts to incentivize young American couples to have families and the continued commitment of the United States to becoming the most-family friendly country in the world.” Other American speakers included Congressman Harris, Valerie Huber from the H.H.S, and Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler.
Both Congressman Andy Harris (R-MD) and Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler (R-MO) have a history of being against LGBTQ rights. Ms. Hartzler voted against the Equality Act because of its support for the LGBTQ community and gender fluidity in sex education curricula. In 2014, Harris was declared by the Human Rights Campaign as being one of the “most anti-equality members of Congress.” As for Valerie Huber, she has traveled the world to encourage others to join the cause to restrict abortion rights and promote traditional family values.
The day after, the Hungarian ambassador to the U.N., Katalin Bogyay, announced that Hungary, Poland, Brazil and the U.S., had launched “Partnership for Families” in the U.N. According to the European Large Families Confederation, Novak released a statement about the Partnership’s intentions: “But we don’t want to act against something but in the interests of something, and would specifically like to put forward proposals that facilitate the prosperity of families. We would not like to react to processes, but on the contrary, to be at the forefront of proposals that help families.”
Katalin Novak was back stateside this past February for the National Prayer Breakfast, an event organized by a highly conservative Christian group known as The Family, which provides opportunities for attendees to meet with the most influential in the American government (at the price of thousands of dollars). According to the Hungarian Embassy’s website, during the Breakfast’s week, Novak “exchanged views on family policy and religious freedom with the delegates of the German Bundestag (German federal parliament).” She also chatted with Congressman Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE) who voted against a 2016 bill that added sexual orientation and gender identity to the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act.
So, it is clear a global alliance is growing and gaining steam. With Polish President Duda being re-elected last month, and Hungary’s Parliament voting to ban legal recognition of transgender and intersex people in late May, it looks like action is taking place against the LGBTQ community around the world, and these leaders have supporters. According to Remy Bonny, they don’t have to be leaders of the government either.
“Far-right leaders in Italy, France and The Netherlands have also been participating in anti-LGBTQ groups,” he explains. “You see Romania,[which banned gender studies in its universities in June] the U.K. and several post Soviet States copy-pasting certain policies. So the anti-LGBTQ alliances are not fixed, but it’s growing for sure.”
With these alliances, it is wonder how it will effect the United States, and its presidential election this November. As many in the LGBTQ community and its supporters know, the Trump administration hasn’t been too kind towards this group of Americans. According to the Human Rights Campaign, Trump and his team have taken about 33 acts against LGBTQ people. They include banning transgender and HIV-positive people from serving in the military, appointing anti-LGBTQ judges, making schools less friendly towards transgender students, and removing any LGBTQ rights and recognition webpages from government websites shortly after Inauguration Day in January 2017. Even Vice-President Mike Pence has refused to acknowledge the LGBTQ community during his National AIDS Day speeches. It also can’t be ignored that Trump rolled back on a policy initiated by former President Barack Obama, which protected the LGBTQ community from health discrimination — on the 4th anniversary of the mass shooting at The Pulse in Orlando. As of now, the Trump administration is apparently butting heads with the courts following the Supreme Court’s ruling on June 15th that protected LGBTQ people from discrimination in the workplace.
Imagine what would happen is Trump is re-elected in November? Especially after all that has been done during his first term? And what his counterparts have done and aim to do with their growing alliances? Bonny says they are all copying-and-pasting each other, and that is very concerning.
“We should fear for the worst. The alliance will grow,” Bonny says about Duda winning his re-election, and the likelihood Trump wins his.
“Both domestically, and internationally,” Bonny adds. “The ultraconservative forces will feel like they have unlimited power. Duda already announced a ‘stop of LGBT’ if he gets re-elected. Duda was the first foreign leader to visit the White House since the corona crisis last week. Trump invited him clearly to support his election campaign. I believe the announcements on LGBTQ-issues of the Trump administration of the last weeks should also not be misunderstood. Poland, Hungary and the U.S. are setting the example to introduce anti-LGBTQ policies.”
But there still will work to be done if Trump does lose in November.
“It will be a momentum for liberal and progressive forces in the Western hemisphere,” Bonny says. “We need to be strong by then, and be able to really cash in their losses. That means that the LGBTQ-movement needs to go beyond its current structures. We are too much built upon an ‘attempted hierarchy’ that at the same time pledges for gradual developments and ‘extinguishing little bushfires’. Instead of dealing with the homophobes locally, we should attack the forces above them: the Russian intelligence operations, American multinationals linked to the evangelical church, religious institutes. It’s these forces who give power to conservative leaders on a local level.”
This was seen just this past week when left-wing Polish parliamentarians wore the colors of the Pride flag to President Duda’s swearing-in ceremony. Two female LGBTQ activists were harshly treated while being detained for protesting against homophobia in their country. This led to large protests throughout the country. Even Romania saw protests in June when its government banned gender studies at its universities.
Although Russia is largely behind the global anti-LGBTQ movement and the alliances that are coming with it, Bonny explains that it is more about geopolitics so they can shift the world order in their favor. Perhaps its because Russians are intensely proud of their history and culture, and do not want anything or anyone to dismantle it in any way. As Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov once said, “We have our moral principles, our historical, cultural and religious traditions according to which our society lives. We do not want discrimination to occur in the reverse direction, when one group of citizens gets the right to aggressively advance their values which differ from the majority of the members of the society.”
Even Olympian Yelena Isinbayeva echoed this sentiment: “We are Russians. Perhaps we are different from Europeans, from people from other countries. We have women who live with guys, and guys with women. We have been fortunate that way since ancient times. We have never had any problems of that sort ever, and we don’t want to have them in the future.”
Perhaps in order to keep its identity, and its birthrate at a higher level than it is now, Russia is attacking what it sees is a threat to all of this by encouraging anti-LGBTQ action around the world. And some leaders around the world, especially in Europe, are finding an alliance, along with perhaps kinship with Russia and its anti-LGBTQ sentiment.
As a result, countries in Eastern Europe are in rewind when it comes to LGBTQ rights, with their most significant steps backwards taken over the last 10 years. Populism and far-rights politics are still powerful movements in not just Europe, but Brazil, Israel, India, and of course, the United States.
Any proof as to how far-reaching the global anti-LGBTQ movement is, take a look at how some countries, such as Turkey and, of course, Poland, are stepping back from the Istanbul Convention which is meant to protect women from violence and femicide. Opponents to the Convention say it leans towards LGBTQ rights and “ideology”. In other words, when LGBTQ rights go, so do women’s, and who knows who else.
Even though many worldwide are willing to defend the LGBTQ community and fight for their rights, there are some who seem astonished that an alliance is building up to the point it cannot go unnoticed — mainly because LGBTQ rights are rolling back so quickly after so much work.
Hadley Stewart, a medical journalist with Euro News, who is gay, is one of them. He wrote about how the recent events in Hungary showcase a “ wider anti-equality movement that has become fashionable in European politics” and expressed his fear and dismay of what would happen next.
“I fear that decade’s worth of progress could be lost if this current trajectory continues. Perhaps the most important question is just how far will it go?”
That all depends on those who care about LGBTQ rights, in the United States and elsewhere. As mentioned before, if Trump wins in November, the alliance would feel unstoppable and will continue to steamroll over the many LGBTQ rights that have come about in the last 10 years or more. Even if Trump does lose, as Remy Bonny was quoted earlier, it “means that the LGBTQ-movement needs to go beyond its current structures.”
Come to think of it, the fight for LGBTQ rights must begin right now, and not wait until the results of November’s election. Doing so would waste valuable time and process that could’ve been made during then. More LGBTQ rights could be lost in the United States before November 3rd. We also don’t know how much stronger that alliance can get, or what other actions will be taken against LGBTQ people all over the world-and not just Poland, Hungary, Russia and elsewhere. This all goes to show that human rights and freedoms can never be taken for granted, especially amidst powerful people who disagree on what human rights is all about.
The movement to erase all the progress is real and it’s gaining momentum. The movement to save LGBTQ rights, and LGBTQ people, needs to be just as real, and just as dedicated. The time is now, and not later, to get going on saving LGBTQ rights.
