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Obama must take action on LGBT rights overseas

When I was a young man, still in the closet, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, one of the most prolific authorities on Jewish law of the 20th century, described gay people as rebels against God.
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October 20, 2014
When I was a young man, still in the closet, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, one of the most prolific authorities on Jewish law of the 20th century, described gay people as rebels against God.  Grossly misinformed about the phenomenon, Rabbi Feinstein posited that homosexuals were possessed of a demonic urge to destroy civilization.  Ten years later, the characterization of homosexual desire in Orthodox Judaism moved from a portrayal of vicious evil to a serious, but ordinary sin.  Later, the language shifted from active sinfulness to sickness, as putative reparative therapies claimed to offer cures to what was deemed a mental illness. Recently, a majority of Orthodox rabbis have rejected these bogus therapeutic claims and some are beginning to describe homosexuality “as simply a part of the human condition.”
 
The arc described above is a piece of a larger American story, and it is still in motion.  There is much work to do in my own community to move more Orthodox leaders to this last and most realistic portrayal of sexual orientation.  Eshel, an organization I helped to found four years ago, is working to encourage Orthodox leaders to take responsibility for the well-being of LGBT young people in their communities and schools, to offer them what every young person needs most, a secure sense of self-worth and hope for a good future.
 
However, while we continue to press for greater understanding and acceptance for LGBT people here in America, many of the LGBT people living across the globe are untouched by the last fifty years of social progress.  Same-sex loving people who live in traditional communities in Africa, India and Asia are still commonly perceived by powerful religious and political leaders as demonic, corrosive threats to their respective societies and face devastating, if not deadly, threats.  Tens of thousands of people are actively intimidated, humiliated, brutally assaulted and even killed by family members, peers and, in many cases, by police and other government officials—simply because of who they are or whom they love.  In 77 countries, people can be arrested for having sex with someone of the same gender. In five of those countries, a person can be put to death for being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.
 
Last February, Ugandan President Museveni signed into law the Anti-Homosexuality Act, which punishes same-sex sexual behavior with life in prison and makes it illegal for organizations to provide services like health care to LGBT people or promote their human rights. On June 30 this year, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law a bill banning the “propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations to minors,” thus opening a new, dark chapter in the history of gay rights in Russia.
 
All of this feels disturbingly familiar. In the summer of 1935 in Germany the Third Reich's Ministry of Justice revised and strengthened Paragraph 175, a provision of the German criminal code established in 1861 that punished homosexuality.  Months later, on September 15, 1935, new laws were instituted at a party rally in Nuremberg. The Nazis revoked Reich citizenship for Jews and carried pernicious racial theories into law.  Just shy of 80 years ago, Nazis began what would be their systematic persecution and selective extermination of homosexuals along with their murderous war on the Jews by carrying into law portrayals of both Jews and homosexuals as demonic threats to the German people.  
 
The policies of Uganda and Russia and 75 other countries all over the world that criminalize homosexuality are treading this path of demonization of difference and enshrining it into law.  The Jewish community bears a covenantal duty to God and to the memory of millions not to stand idly by the degradation of our fellows.  As proud Americans we are called to global leadership on the human rights issues of our day.
 
The urgency of this moment presses upon me, not only as a Jewish American, but as a child of a Holocaust survivor.  My mother and aunt were among the 1,300 hidden children who were saved by ordinary French citizens and brave resistance workers—people who risked their lives daily for an Abrahamic ethic of welcome and a biblical notion of human value and dignity.   
 
I and all the children and grandchildren of those 1,300 saved souls can no longer thank the many resistance workers in France who risked life and limb for our families, but we can support the brave human rights workers today in Uganda and Russia and around the world, who are working to turn around pernicious laws and to change the cultures where they live.  We can champion the courageous justice workers, from Kampala to Cairo, and from Mombasa to Moscow, who often risk their lives to fight the cultural and institutional forms of bigotry that continue to plague the world today.  Presently, there is no high level U.S. diplomat whose job is to coordinate global efforts to defend the rights of LGBT people.
 
I feel very proud that a few months ago, my Senator, Edward Markey of Massachusetts, took on this challenge.  He introduced a new bill in the Senate that aims to promote LGBT rights around the world. Several weeks later it was introduced in the House of Representatives. If it passes, the International Human Rights Defense Act will make preventing and responding to discrimination and violence against the LGBT community a foreign policy priority, and will ensure that our government devises a global strategy to achieve those goals. It will also create the permanent position of a “Special Envoy for the Human Rights of LGBT People” in the State Department.
 
We all are aware of the challenges of the present Congress. While the bill was introduced with support on both sides of the aisle in the House, it does not yet have bipartisan support in the Senate, and so it faces a steep uphill battle on the Hill. I urge all Americans to press their members of Congress to support this bill and I urge the Jewish community to join American Jewish World Service’s We Believe campaign, which is fighting for this and other legislation that promotes the rights of women, girls and LGBT people in the developing world.  
 
In the meantime, President Obama can put a vital aspect of this bill into action immediately by appointing a Special Envoy for LGBT rights in the State Department. The Obama administration has a legacy of leadership on this issue—and now has an opportunity to provide high-level diplomatic attention to a situation that unfortunately appears to be worsening in much of the developing world.   
 
I am calling on President Obama to insure that the U.S. leads global efforts to promote the rights of sexual minorities and to end the deadly demonization of LGBT people in much of the developing world.  With the President’s continued leadership on this issue, we can make America a beacon of light and hope for LGBT people worldwide.   
 
Rabbi Steven Greenberg is a Senior Teaching Fellow at Clal-The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, co-director of Eshel, an Orthodox LGBT community support and education organization and serves on the faculty of the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America. He lives in Boston with his partner Steven Goldstein and daughter Amalia. 
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