IDAHOBIT 2023: Ending Conversion Therapy Practices Globally

CGE Staff
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Today, we celebrate IDAHOBIT, the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Interphobia, and Transphobia. IDAHOBIT’s organizers, in announcing this year’s theme — “Together Always: United in Diversity” — note how at “a time where the progress made by our LGBTQIA+ communities worldwide is increasingly at risk, it is crucial to recognize the power of solidarity, community, and allyship across different identities, movements, and borders.”

We are pleased to see, in observing IDAHOBIT this year, the United States government has demonstrated its solidarity and allyship with the global LGBTQI+ community by now rolling out its action plan to promote the end of conversion therapy practices around the world.

In a statement today marking IDAHOBIT, Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared …

the United States reaffirms our commitment to exposing the harm conversion therapy practices cause to LGBTQI+ persons. We reaffirm the importance of ensuring access to evidence-based healthcare without discrimination or stigma regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or sex characteristics. We recommit to opposing the criminalization of LGBTQI+ status or conduct, which can drive the pathologizing of LGBTQI+ persons and the practice of so-called conversion therapy. We confirm that conversion therapy practices are inconsistent with U.S. nondiscrimination policies and ineligible for support through taxpayer-funded foreign assistance grants and contracts.

As you may recall, President Biden issued an Executive Order for Pride Month last year that instructed the relevant agencies to “address so-called conversion therapy around the world … the Secretary of State, in collaboration with the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of HHS, and the Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development, shall develop an action plan to promote an end to its use around the world.” 

In response to E.O. 10475, the Council for Global Equality issued our recommendations for implementing President Biden’s order. The action plan announced today draws upon the CGE issue brief, along with the input of experts from State, USAID, Treasury, and HHS.

Now, fulfilling the directives promised in E.O. 10475, the U.S. government — through its embassies, consulates, and missions around the world and across a broad range of federal agencies — is committing itself to the numerous partnerships necessary to end these abusive practices. This includes working with LGBTQI+ community groups around the world; with like-minded allies and other partner governments; with counterparts in foreign ministries of health and justice; and with faith leaders, educators, professional associations, and other civil society networks.

The U.S. government also plans to work to end CTPs at various multilateral institutions, including the development banks and international development institutions to which the United States is a party, to ensure that no financial or programmatic support, direct or otherwise, goes towards CTPs.

The action plan draws from a well-equipped toolbox designed to make sure that initiatives to end conversion therapy practices globally are informed by local actors and suitably tailored to the local context. This toolbox includes, but is not limited to:

  • Developing and promoting educational programs, technical assistance, and trainings for a broad range of partners
  • Reviewing health guidance and programs to likewise prevent such practices
  • Explicitly addressing CTPs in community engagement initiatives
  • Working to ensure that U.S. taxpayer-funded foreign assistance grants and contracts do not permit or enable CTPs
  • Soliciting proposals under the Global Equality Fund and the Rainbow Fund for programming to respond to and prevent CTPs globally by empowering civil society, improving acceptance and tolerance of LGBTQI+ persons, and advancing policies with the aim of responding to and preventing CTPs

Ending so-called “conversion therapy” — a deeply abusive and discredited set of practices bankrolled by pseudoscientific businesses, religious extremists, and other anti-LGBTQI+ forces to the tune of billions of dollars per year — will be a long but essential journey for our country and our global movement. But on this IDAHOBIT, as we celebrate the resilience, creativity, and bravery of our community in the face of those who would do us harm, we are grateful for the allyship of the Biden Administration in taking these steps towards a day when conversion therapy practices are confined to the dustbin of history.

Happy IDAHOBIT!