Trump administration launches global effort to end criminalization of homosexuality
Source: NBC News
The administration is responding in part to a reported hanging of a young gay man in Iran, Trump’s top geopolitical foe.
Feb. 19, 2019, 12:00 PM EST
By Josh Lederman
BERLIN — The Trump administration is launching a global campaign to end the criminalization of homosexuality in dozens of nations where it's still illegal to be gay, U.S. officials tell NBC News, a bid aimed in part at denouncing Iran over its human rights record.
U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, the highest-profile openly gay person in the Trump administration, is leading the effort, which kicks off Tuesday evening in Berlin. The U.S. embassy is flying in LGBT activists from across Europe for a strategy dinner to plan to push for decriminalization in places that still outlaw homosexuality — mostly concentrated in the Middle East, Africa and the Caribbean.
“It is concerning that, in the 21st century, some 70 countries continue to have laws that criminalize LGBTI status or conduct,” said a U.S. official involved in organizing the event.
Although the decriminalization strategy is still being hashed out, officials say it’s likely to include working with global organizations like the United Nations, the European Union and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, as well as other countries whose laws already allow for gay rights. Other U.S. embassies and diplomatic posts throughout Europe, including the U.S. Mission to the E.U., are involved, as is the State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor.
Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trump-administration-launches-global-effort-end-criminalization-homosexuality-n973081
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Gay and lesbian workers are not completely without protection though. States, counties, and cities can pass their own laws that protect beyond what federal law does, and to date, twenty-two states and the District of Columbia do so. Another eleven states prohibit sexual orientation discrimination against the very narrow category of public employees. President Obama signed an executive order in 2014 protecting federal employees and contractors from sexual orientation discrimination, and President Trump has so far kept most, though not all, of that order intact.
This piecemeal approach to protecting gay workers means that a large number of people are protected in some form, but that people in the majority of states are not protected. That is, not protected unless the federal law, Title VII, is interpreted to already protect against sexual orientation discrimination, without being changed at all. That is the argument that the Second Circuit Court of Appeals adopted today.
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ETA: Ok, raise your hand if you read the headline about thought, "Wait? Now "the Onion" is allowed in LBN?!"
