213 House members ask Speaker Johnson to condemn anti-trans rhetoric

On Monday, two lawmakers reintroduced a bill that would require the State Department to promote LGBTQ rights abroad.

A press release states that the International Human Rights Act, introduced by Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), would “direct” the State Department to “monitor and respond to violence against LGBTQ+ people around the world, while developing a comprehensive plan to combat discrimination, criminalization, and hate-motivated attacks against the LGBTQ+ community” and “formally create a special envoy to coordinate LGBTQ+ policy across the Department.”

“As LGBTQ+ people continue to face escalating violence, discrimination, and disenfranchisement here at home and abroad, we must act now,” Garcia said in a press release. “This bill will defend the LGBTQ+ community at home and abroad and show the world that our country can once again be a leader in defending dignity and human rights.”

Markey, Garcia, and U.S. Rep. Sarah Jacobs (D-Calif.) introduced the International Human Rights Act of 2023. Markey and former California Rep. Alan Lowenthal sponsored the same bill in 2019.

Promoting LGBTQ and intersex rights was a cornerstone of the Biden-Harris administration’s entire foreign policy.

The global LGBTQ and intersex rights movement has lost an estimated $50 million or more in funding since the Trump-Vance administration froze nearly all U.S. foreign aid.

The U.S. Agency for International Development, which funded dozens of advocacy groups around the world, officially shut down on July 1. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said earlier this year that the State Department would administer the remaining 17 percent of USAID contracts that have not been canceled.

In 2021, then-President Joe Biden appointed Jessica Stern, former executive director of Outright International, as the administration’s U.S. special envoy for advancing LGBTQ and intersex rights.

President Trump and Vance have not nominated anyone to this position.

Stern, who co-founded the Alliance for Foreign Affairs and Justice after leaving government, was one of the harshest critics of the removal of LGBTQ- and intersex-specific references from the State Department’s 2024 human rights report.

“This is an intentional erasure,” Stern said in August after the State Department released its report.

In a letter to Rubio on September 9, the Congressional Equality Caucus urged the State Department to re-include LGBTQ and intersex people in its annual human rights report. The letter was spearheaded by Garcia, Rep. Julie Johnson (D-Texas), and Sarah McBride (D-Delaware), who chairs the group’s International LGBTQI+ Rights Task Force.

“We must recommit the United States to defending human rights and promoting equality and justice around the world,” Markey said in response to the International Human Rights Act he introduced with Garcia. “It is as important as ever that we stand up and protect LGBTQ+ people from the Trump administration’s cruel attempts to further marginalize this community. I will continue to fight alongside LGBTQ+ people for a world that recognizes LGBTQ+ rights as human rights.”