Former US envoy for global LGBTQ, intersex rights slams Trump

Jessica Stern, a former special envoy for promoting LGBTQ and intersex rights, says the work she and her colleagues have done under the Biden Harris administration has been “systematically dismantled.”

“As the leader in US foreign policy on LGBTQI+ issues, it has been extremely difficult to see that work systematically dismantle over the past two months,” she told the Washington Blade in a phone interview on March 19.

Stern was executive director of Attright International, a global LGBTQ and intersex advocacy group, when then-President Joe Biden appointed her in June 2021.

Promotion of LGBTQ and intersex rights was the basis of the overall foreign policy of the Biden-Harris administration. These efforts included the decriminalization of consensual same-sex relationships and marriage equality efforts in countries that activists stated were possible through legislative or judicial processes.

The Trump Vance administration’s decision to freeze US foreign aid spending for at least 90 days had a devastating impact on the global LGBTQ and intersex rights movement. President Donald Trump’s executive order banning the State Department from issuing passports with “X” gender markers has urged Germany and several other European countries to issue travel advisories for transgender and non-binary people planning to visit the United States.

Stern said the Trump Vance administration “studied other countries’ anti-LGBTQI strategies and essentially imported the worst ideas from around the world. Stern added that these policies encouraged Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban, Russian President Vladimir Putin, Argentine President Javier Mailey and other anti-LGBTQ heads of state.

“When a small country with limited global reach implements anti-LGBTQI laws and policies, that’s one thing. When one of the world’s superpowers does that, that’s another,” Stern told Blade. “There is no doubt that the US’s return on LGBTQI rights will in fact accelerate backlash against LGBTQI people around the world.”

“We provide political legitimacy for those ideas, but we are building new alliances and coalitions and promoting these ideas to other countries,” she added. “So it’s not passive action. The US government is currently actively funding around the world and spreading anti-LGBTQI hatred.”

A former State Department colleague “fears every day”

In a February 3 statement defending efforts to dismantle US international development agencies, the Trump Vance administration said examples of the organization’s “waste and abuse” included $2 million for “sexual change and “LGBT activities” in Guatemala and $1.5 million for “diversity, equity and inclusion in the Serbian workplace and business community.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said last month that 83% of USAID contracts were cancelled, with the rest being “currently being managed more effectively under the State Department.”

After the Trump Vance administration freezes nearly all foreign aid spending in the United States, Rubio has issued an exemption that enabled the president’s emergency plan for AIDS relief and other “life-saving humanitarian assistance” programs.

Blade previously reported Pepfar-funded programs in Kenya, South Africa and elsewhere, halting and even closing services due to a lack of funding in the US. On March 24, UNAIDS executive director Byanyima said that if the US does not fully recover from foreign aid, 6.3 million people worldwide will die from AIDS-related complications over the next four years.

Stern said her former State Department colleagues are “fearing every day.”

“They never know, ‘Are I fired today?’ “Are I going to take administrative leave?” she said.

Stern told Blade that her previous colleague “issues that much disruption caused by doge (government efficiency) so much foreign policy work doesn’t happen very often.”

“The whole department was thinned out,” she said. One of them said they lost 60. “It’s hardly conceivable to understand how to rebuild work when resources are thinned out.”

Stern described himself as an “eternal optimist” when Blade asked if he thought the US could support LGBTQ and intersex rights abroad.

“You have to believe in human rights,” she said.

Stern called former Secretary of State Antony Blinken “an alliance on LGBTQI issues.” Stern also said many of her current State Department colleagues thanked her and her team before they left the government.

“There is compassion from career staff, people who are not human rights experts or non-experts, people who are not focused on the well-being of LGBTQI people, and people who are ensuring that they are ensuring that their values, rules of law, all equality and the idea that our national interests are heading towards the world, from straight, cisdar allies.

“The circumstances we found will not last forever,” Stern added. “All we have to do is understand how to keep the line right now and how to organize it for the future.”

She highlighted the ways to “hold the line” include lawsuits, protests, letters to editors and demand accountability from lawmakers.

“There’s a lot to do,” Stern said.

Stern currently teaches at Columbia University’s Faculty of International Public Relations and writes about her experience as “the first human rights expert to become a special US envoy on LGBTQI rights.” Stern also told Blade that she is working on launching a new organization.

“I love being an activist again,” she said. “If there’s a time when you need an activist, that’s what it is now.”

“I’m really proud to be rejoining the resistance,” Stern added.