Donald Trump’s global pledge for gay decriminalisation explained

Donald Trump is reportedly launching a campaign to end the criminalisation of homosexuality around the world, in a move that critics claim is merely a smokescreen to target Iran.

This week, the US ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, the highest-profile openly gay person in the Trump administration, hosted LGBT activists from around Europe. He outlined a strategy that was believed to include working with global organisations such as the United Nations and European Union to decriminalise homosexuality worldwide.

According to 2017 statistics from the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association, 70 countries around the world still criminalise homosexuality, with the majority in the Middle East, Africa and the Caribbean.

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“While on its surface, the move looks like an atypically benevolent decision by the Trump administration, the details of the campaign belie a different story” says Mathew Rodriguez in Out magazine.

“Rather than actually being about helping queer people around the world, the campaign looks more like another instance of the right using queer people as a pawn to amass power and enact its own agenda.”

The Independent says the campaign “comes in stark contrast to President Trump’s treatment of LGBTQ+ citizens and their rights in his own nation”, while Pink News notes that the US “does not intend to address issues such as marriage equality, same-sex adoption and anti-LGBT discrimination laws in countries where being gay is illegal”.

Vox says it may even be a way to “highlight Iran’s human rights abuses”.

“The Trump administration has made getting tough on Iran the centerpiece of its foreign policy, and it has often called out the oppression of the regime” says the news site, adding that the new campaign “appears to have been inspired, at least in part, by a report of a gay man who was publicly hanged in Iran in January”.

Grenell, who is leading the decriminalisation drive, has also been “an outspoken Iran critic and has aggressively pressed European nations to abandon the 2015 nuclear deal and re-impose sanctions” says NBC News’s Josh Lederman.

He adds: “Reframing the conversation on Iran around a human rights issue that enjoys broad support in Europe could help the United States and Europe reach a point of agreement on Iran, yet by using gay rights as a cudgel against Iran, the Trump administration risks exposing close US allies who are also vulnerable on the issue and creating a new tension point with the one region where Trump has managed to strengthen US ties: the Arab world.”

Chief among these is Saudi Arabia, whose human rights record is already under international scrutiny following the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and where homosexuality can be punishable by death.

“From the report, it does seem like it’s quite an instrumentalized move - if it’s true - around Iran,” Graeme Reid, director of the LGBT rights programme at Human Rights Watch, told The Daily Beast.

He warned that if the campaign is motivated in part out of a desire to persuade European nations to join the US in opposition to Iran, it could actually backfire on LGBT people in the Middle Eastern country, who are already at risk of being killed due to their sexual orientation.

“Grenell’s meeting on Tuesday appears to be a first step toward any action,” says Vox, “but it’s still unclear how aggressive, broad or sustained this campaign might be, either in Iran or the rest of the world.”