The Right Goes Wild: Conservatives Condemn Obama Administration For Treating Gay People As Human

Conservatives are not happy about the Obama administration’s new effort to promote LGBT freedom across the globe, trumpeted by State Sec. Hillary Clinton in an historic speech to the United Nations yesterday. Most opponents of the new plan have couched their comments in the assumption that homosexuality is wrong and not something we should “export,” directly contradicting Clinton’s point that “being gay is not a Western invention; it is a human reality.” Here’s a round-up of the various responses from the Religious Right:

• Rick Perry: “This is just the most recent example of an administration at war with people of faith in this country. Investing tax dollars promoting a lifestyle many Americas of faith find so deeply objectionable is wrong. President Obama has again mistaken America’s tolerance for different lifestyles with an endorsement of those lifestyles.”
• Rick Santorum: “Obviously the administration is promoting their particular agenda in this country, and now they feel its their obligation to promote those values not just in the military, not just in our society, but now around the world with taxpayer dollars.”
• Matt Barber (Liberty Counsel): “[President Obama] feels compelled to export American culture’s decline in morality, and export that immorality to other nations that are trying to adhere to traditional principles relative to human sexuality.”
• Peter LaBarbera (American For Truth About Homosexuality): “Reading Hillary’s UN #gay rights speech. The arrogance of modern liberalism is astounding: redefining sin as a *human right.*“
• Pat Robertson (The 700 Club): “Isn’t it appalling that the United States of America would try to force the acceptance of homosexuality on other nations but at the same time we would not force them to take care of their religious minorities and they would permit discrimination and persecution of Christians?”
• Vic Eliason (Voice of Christian Youth America): “The inmates have taken over the asylum.”
• Mat Staver (Liberty Counsel): “[The Obama administration] is forcing foreign countries to fund and liberalize… the radical sexual anarchist agenda.”
• Janet Mefferd (radio personality): “Other than the fact that you have African countries that have policies like Nigeria, criminalizing homosexuality, are they not a sovereign nation? Can’t they make up their own minds about these things? If they want to pass a law we’re going to play bully over this issue?”

No one has responded as negatively as the Family Research Council’s Peter Sprigg, however, who has already spoken out multiple times against the new policy in the 24 hours since it was rolled out. After condemning President Obama for promoting the “radical ideology of the sexual revolution,” Sprigg unloaded all of his anti-gay vitriol on Christian Broadcast News:

These type of human rights and civil rights protections are usually granted for characteristics that are inborn, involuntary — you can’t choose them, immutable — you can’t change them, and innocuous — they do no harm to anyone. All of those things are true of race and sex. None of them is true of the choice to engage in homosexual conduct.

In many African countries, such as Uganda, Ghana, and Nigeria, homophobia is proliferated through Catholic or Protestant Christian groups, often with American ties. They promote the insidious lies Sprigg mentioned and spread fears that homosexuality will literally destroy society. The Obama administration’s new effort to end persecution abroad is a battle to fight on our own shores as much as on theirs.