Groundbreaking Executive Order to Protect LBTQI Youth and Families and End Conversion Therapy

June 16, 2022 – CGE enthusiastically welcomes the new Executive Order Advancing LGBTQI+ Equality that introduces new measures to protect LGBTQI+ kids and families, in the United States and around the world.

As the White House notes, more than 300 anti-LGBTQI+ laws have been introduced in US state legislatures over the past year—a development mirrored by anti-LGBTQTI+ laws proposed or passed from Russia to Guatemala to Ghana.

It is more important than ever that we understand what we’re up against, as we witness coordinated attacks on the basic citizenship of LGBTQI+ people and on reproductive rights and bodily autonomy, as we even see violent extremists threatening to disrupt Pride, right here in the United States.

The first “Don’t Say Gay” bill was passed in Russia in 2013, and since then, we’ve seen similar legislation proposed in Guatemala and in Ghana. We’ve seen how Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill draws directly from the law passed in Hungary under the authoritarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán.

American politicians such as Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott, along with their autocratic counterparts around the world, are using Vladimir Putin’s playbook to end progress for women, LGBTQI+ people, and other disenfranchised groups. They all prey on fear to divide and conquer, fighting inclusion, inciting violence, and fundamentally damaging democracy.

So CGE strongly supports the Biden-Harris Administration’s efforts to support queer and trans youth through suicide prevention campaigns, expanding access to health care, anti-homelessness programs, and combatting so-called conversion therapy, among other initiatives. These steps forward are clearly invaluable in their own moral right, but they also represent critical support for some of the vulnerable populations most directly targeted by anti-LGBTQI+ extremists and anti-democratic politicians.

CGE stands with all those working, in the United States and around the globe, to ensure the full promise of LGBTQI+ human rights and the full inclusion of LGBTQI+ youth and families. We especially want to note President Biden’s directive to “the Secretaries of State, Treasury, and HHS to develop an action plan to promote an end to so-called ‘conversion therapy’ around the world and ensure that U.S. foreign assistance dollars do not fund the practice.”

As a coalition of 32 organizations working to make U.S. foreign policy more LGBTQI+ inclusive and affirming, CGE looks forward to working the Administration, with a broad range of federal departments and agencies, and with U.S. embassies to craft and implement a plan to end these harmful practices for good.