Trump Admin pushes to decriminalize homosexuality abroad

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Trump Admin pushes to decriminalize homosexuality abroad

Postby cmsellers » Wed Feb 20, 2019 6:36 am

So, the Trump Administration has proposed an initiative to pressure countries to decriminalize homosexuality. Reaction seems to have generally been in the vein of "how can we trust Trump on this when he's rolled back LGBT rights at home?" as with GLAAD's statement.


Now, there's no question at all to me that he's doing this for the wrong reasons. The only countries that still have the death penalty for homosexuality are Muslim-majority nations which incorporate sharia to some degree into their civil codes. A disproportionate number of countries that criminalize homosexuality again use sharia, while all of them are third-world countries of the sort Trump would call shitholes.

This seems calculated to me for Trump to say "look at these liberals, they won't support anything I do, even advancing gay rights!" A cynical part of me wonders if he's hoping to inspire an anti-gay backlash in the developing world. But Hanlon's Razor applies, and the more realistic part of me thinks that this is mainly a way for him to "own the libs" and give his base a talking point.

When the US wants to influence other nations towards freedom and democracy, we tend to be subtle about it (the occasional military intervention aside), because even this causes a backlash that drives these countries towards China, which doesn't care what you do to your people. I think that even if Obama had done what Trump did, announcing a big-bold initiative to change other countries' laws on homosexuality, the countries where homosexuality is illegal would have pushed back hard.

Weirdly enough, the fact that it's Trump pushing this makes me cautiously optimistic that most countries won't take it seriously enough for a backlash to be a problem; they'll just sort of ignore the whole thing. And I don't think it will achieve his stated goal. Best-case scenario, a few Caribbean nations that don't really enforce their laws will change them in an attempt to curry favor with the US, which is nice, but not worth risking a backlash, especially not when any country that would change its laws under public American pressure would presumably do so under private pressure.

Of course, I could be totally wrong. If any countries which actively enforce laws against homosexuality change those laws because of American pressure, I'll add this to the very short list of things Trump has done that I approve of, whatever his intentions.
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Re: Trump Admin pushes to decriminalize homosexuality abroad

Postby Absentia » Wed Feb 20, 2019 7:42 am

It sounds like this is Trump trying to curry favor with Europe against Iran. I don't really get the preoccupation with Iran, but it actually seems like a pretty shrewd move on his part, which makes me near 100% certain it wasn't his idea.

But whatever his motives, if this leads to any progress anywhere I can't really find fault. Between this and taking a hard stance against Maduro, I'd almost be inclined to think he was doing a decent job if he wasn't wiping his ass with the Constitution domestically.
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Re: Trump Admin pushes to decriminalize homosexuality abroad

Postby cmsellers » Wed Feb 20, 2019 7:53 am

His opposition to Maduro is the third thing he's done since being elected I approved of; it was like he was acting like a normal president for once.

I still don't think that making a big publicity stunt over this is going to be helpful, or something a normal president would have done. And I don't see why this would win over Europe while he's hemming and hawwing about whether he'll really honor NATO's Article 5.
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Re: Trump Admin pushes to decriminalize homosexuality abroad

Postby Kivutar » Wed Feb 20, 2019 8:34 pm

Well, if it works, I'll go with

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Re: Trump Admin pushes to decriminalize homosexuality abroad

Postby Absentia » Wed Feb 20, 2019 9:12 pm

cmsellers wrote:His opposition to Maduro is the third thing he's done since being elected I approved of; it was like he was acting like a normal president for once.

I still don't think that making a big publicity stunt over this is going to be helpful, or something a normal president would have done. And I don't see why this would win over Europe while he's hemming and hawwing about whether he'll really honor NATO's Article 5.


I think it's something other presidents would have done, but wouldn't have gotten much press coverage for. I don't think anybody would have been surprised if Obama had pushed for more LGBT rights abroad, given that he was openly supportive of them at home.

That sort of goes to why I think this is a good move: there's really no downside risk for Trump. Liberals like LGBT rights, conservatives hate sharia, and the international community already thinks he's a buffoon so if it goes nowhere it's not like he stands to lose a lot of face. Plus it's an easy bit of optics that he can point to during the campaign and say he stood up for the rights of the oppressed, and if any Dem tries to criticize him he can call them a hypocrite.
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Re: Trump Admin pushes to decriminalize homosexuality abroad

Postby iMURDAu » Sat Feb 23, 2019 12:38 pm

Why not just legalize it? Decriminalization is just one step away from that and most places already allow for medical what were we talking about again?

Idk the idea of a Republican POTUS with the last name Trump trying to get homosexuality normalized in other countries is something that would have been unheard of a decade ago. Or like even last week, really.

I guess this is one of those foreign policy is different than domestic policy type o' deals. Do other countries actually take this administration seriously though? If they won't listen to reason will we send our armed forces (without, you know, *whispers* transgender people), to get the point across?

Hard to not be skeptical considering I think Trump is a highly functioning bear orangutan pigfucker person of very little brain, but hopefully this brings some change to the world.
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Re: Trump Admin pushes to decriminalize homosexuality abroad

Postby JamishT » Mon Feb 25, 2019 4:40 am

I don't think Trump cares enough about LGBT+ people to hate them or love them, so I don't assign some deeper feeling/belief to this move, he just thinks it will help him in some way.
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Re: Trump Admin pushes to decriminalize homosexuality abroad

Postby Windy » Mon Feb 25, 2019 11:42 am

Wassup everyone, what have yall been doing to help LGBT people lately???
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Re: Trump Admin pushes to decriminalize homosexuality abroad

Postby cmsellers » Mon Feb 25, 2019 4:57 pm

Windy wrote:Wassup everyone, what have yall been doing to help LGBT people lately???

I beat up Justin Smollett to help raise awareness.
And also because I needed the money.
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