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Thursday, February 21, 2019

HOW TO IMMUNIZE YOURSELF AGAINST VACCINE PROPAGANDA~LISTENING VS COERCION ON "VACCINE HESITANCY"~BABY DIED AFTER VACCINATION

FDA THREATENS TO ENFORCE MANDATORY VACCINATION LAWS COUNTRYWIDE


Federal government set to override state laws, force vaccines amid MSM-fueled measles hype

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HOW TO IMMUNIZE YOURSELF AGAINST 
VACCINE PROPAGANDA 
BY Jeremy R. Hammond 
SEE: https://thevaccinereaction.org/2019/02/how-to-immunize-yourself-against-vaccine-propaganda/; republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:
A New York Times editorial attacks “anti-vaxxers” as “the enemy”, but it’s the Times editors who are dangerously irrational and ignorant of the science.
On January 19, 2019, the New York Times published an editorial mischaracterizing anyone who dares to criticize or dissent from public vaccine policy as dangerously irrational and ignorant.1 In doing so, the Times avoided having to seriously address any of the countless legitimate concerns that parents have today about vaccinating their children according to the CDC’s routine childhood vaccine schedule. Consequently, the Times fulfills the mainstream media’s typical function of manufacturing consent for government policy by manipulating public opinion through deception.2 In this case, the consent being manufactured in service of the state is for public vaccine policy, which constitutes a serious threat to both our health and our liberty.
What the Times editorial represents is not journalism, but public policy advocacy. And to persuade its readers to strictly comply with the CDC’s vaccine schedule, the Times blatantly lies to its readers both about the nature of the debate and what science tells us about vaccine safety and effectiveness.
The first clue that the Times editorial aims to avoid any serious discussion of the issue is the title: “How to Inoculate Against Anti-Vaxxers”. The term “anti-vaxxer”, of course, is the derogatory label that the media apply to anyone who dares to question public vaccine policy. It is reflective of the mainstream media’s routine use of ad hominem argumentation in lieu of reasoned discourse. Rather than substantively addressing their arguments, the media simply dismiss the views of and personally attack critics and dissenters—and this Times editorial is certainly no exception.
The second clue is in the editorial’s subtitle: “The no-vaccine crowd has persuaded a lot of people. But public health can prevail.” To equate public vaccine policy with “public health”, of course, is the fallacy of begging the question. It presumes the proposition to be proven, which is that vaccinating the US childhood population according to the CDC’s schedule is the best way to achieve a healthy population. Many parents, researchers, doctors, and scientists strongly and reasonably disagree.
The Times would have us believe that the science on vaccines is settled. The reality is that there is a great deal of debate and controversy in the scientific literature about the safety and effectiveness of CDC-recommended vaccines. The demonstrable truth of the matter, as the Times editorial so amply illustrates, is that what the government and media say science says about vaccines and what science actually tells us are two completely different and contradictory things.
Indeed, the underlying assumption that the CDC is somehow infallible in its vaccine recommendations is indicative of how vaccination has become a religion, with those who dare to question official dogma being treated as heretics.

How the New York Times Characterizes the Vaccine Issue

The New York Times begins by noting that the World Health Organization (WHO) recently listed “vaccine hesitancy” among ten “threats to global health”.3 The term “vaccine hesitancy” refers to a person’s reluctance or refusal to strictly comply with public vaccine policy, which in the US is determined principally by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and state legislatures making compliance with the CDC’s recommendations mandatory for school entry.
For context, children in the US today who are vaccinated according to the CDC’s schedule will have received 50 doses of 14 vaccines by age six and 72 or more doses of 19 vaccines by age eighteen.4This has naturally led many parents to wonder what the potential unintended consequences might be of their children receiving so many vaccines, including sometimes many at once.
The Times laments that an estimated 100,000 American infants and toddlers remain totally unvaccinated, with millions more having received some but not all of the CDC’s recommended vaccines, all of which the Times describes as “crucial shots”.
The Times characterizes parents who choose not to strictly comply with public vaccine policy as irrational and ignorant of the science. According to its narrative, the internet abounds with “anti-vaccine propaganda” that “has outpaced pro-vaccine public health information.” The “anti-vaxxers” have “hundreds of websites”, media influencers, and political action committees engaged in an “onslaught” of this “propaganda”, which consists of “rumors and conspiracies”.
The response to this “onslaught” by public policy advocates, by contrast, “has been meager.” The CDC “has a website with accurate information, but no loud public voice”, and the rest of the government “has been mum”, leaving “just a handful of academics who get bombarded with vitriol, including outright threats, every time they try to counter pseudoscience with fact.”
The public policy critics and dissenters, according to the Times, are responsible for causing “outbreaks of measles, mumps, and pertussis”, as well as “an increase in influenza deaths” and “dismal rates of HPV vaccination”, the latter of which the Times editors believe otherwise “could effectively wipe out cervical cancer”.
The Times editors further argue that vaccines are “victims of their own success” because people don’t remember “how terrible those diseases once were”. To counter vaccine hesitancy, there are “some hard truths that deserve to be trumpeted. Vaccines are not toxic, and they do not cause autism. Full stop.”
“Trust in vaccines” is being “thoroughly eroded”, the editorial argues, threatening to cause “the next major disease outbreak”. To thwart this “danger”, the Times advocates that other states follow California’s example in eliminating nonmedical exemptions for mandatory vaccinations.
Describing critics and dissenters as “the enemy”, the Times asserts:
The arguments used by people driving the anti-vaccination movement have not changed in about a century. These arguments are effective because they are intuitively appealing—but they are also easily refutable. Instead of ignoring these arguments, an effective pro-vaccine campaign would confront them directly, over and over, for as long as it takes. Yes, there are chemicals in vaccines, but they are not toxic. No, vaccines can’t overwhelm your immune system, which already confronts countless pathogens every day.
Instructively, while the Times asserts that the arguments used by public policy critics are “easily refutable”, the editors avoided having to actually do so by simply lying that they ignore the past hundred years of science. While urging public policy advocates not to ignore the arguments against vaccinating, the Times editors do precisely that.
On the contrary, the critics most certainly cite modern science to support their arguments and to expose how the public is being blatantly lied to by the government and mainstream media, such as how the Times here lies that aluminum and mercury, both used as ingredients in vaccines, “are not toxic.”
Since the Times utterly fails to do so, let’s now take a serious and honest look at the subject and examine the real issues and legitimate concerns that the Times goes so far out of its way to avoid discussing.
To read the rest of this article on the author’s website, please click “How to Immunize Yourself Against Vaccine Propaganda“…
Note: This article was reprinted with the author’s permission. It was originally published on Jeremy Hammond’s blog at JeremyRHammond.com.
References:
1 Editorial Board. How to Inoculate Against Anti-Vaxxers. The New York Times, Jan. 19, 2019.
2 I am borrowing the phrase “manufacturing consent” from Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, whose treatise Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (Pantheon, 1982) describes the mechanisms by which the mainstream media in the US manipulate information, delivering propaganda instead of real journalism in service of the state. They were in turn borrowing the phrase from Walter Lippmann, who had likewise described this phenomenon in his 1921 book Public Opinion.
3 World Health Organization. Ten threats to global health in 2019. WHO.int January 2019
4 Hammond JR. How You’re Being Lied to about the Risks of Getting a Flu Vaccine Annually. JeremyRHammond.com Jan. 11, 2019. A note on citing previous writings of mine as a source to support my arguments in this article: Where I’m citing previous writings of mine as a source for this article, it is because I’ve already written about it in more detail it elsewhere. I encourage readers to read these previous writings and to check the sources I cite to verify the accuracy of what I’m saying for themselves.
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Listening vs Coercion on ‘Vaccine Hesitancy’

BY KATE RAINES
SEE: https://thevaccinereaction.org/2019/02/listening-vs-coercion-on-vaccine-hesitancy/; republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:
The rhetoric surrounding vaccination has long been dismissive of anyone who questions the safety or effectiveness of vaccines or refuses to follow vaccine use recommendations by public health officials and physicians, but the vitriol has reached new heights of late. On one end of the spectrum is the relentless bashing of a young mother who had the audacity to ask on social media what she might do to protect her unvaccinated three-year-old from outbreaks of measles.1
On the other end of the spectrum is the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) declaration of vaccine hesitancy as “one of the top ‘Ten Threats to Global Health in 2019’, alongside air pollution and climate change; noncommunicable diseases; global influenza pandemic; antimicrobial resistance and infectious diseases such as Ebola, dengue fever and HIV.”2
However, one thing many studies have found is that people who favor exercising their informed consent rights with regard to vaccination tend to be among the most educated and conscientious of parents. Several of those studies are summarized and referenced by pediatrician Paul Thomas, MD.3 Commonalities that arose from those studies indicated that while the parents of incompletely vaccinated children trended toward being single, young, poor and less well educated, those of deliberately unvaccinated children were more likely to be college educated and married, with a higher income and had spent time rigorously researching vaccine information.3  
Other researchers have shown a prevalence among vaccine-hesitant parents “salutogenic parenting,” defined as those who “practiced health-promoting activities which they saw as boosting the natural immunity of their children and protecting them from illness (reducing or negating the perceived need for vaccinations). Salutogenic parenting practices included breastfeeding, eating organic and/or home-grown food, cooking from scratch to reduce preservative consumption and reducing exposure to toxins.”4
Another quality identified as common among those who question the recommended schedule of childhood vaccinations or forced vaccination policies is distrust of conventional Western medicine.5
Some mainstream doctors, who restrict health care to use of pharmaceutical products and interventions that conform to the medical model, may attempt to shame caring, educated parents into giving their children every single vaccination recommended by government health officials and medical trade associations. However, this tactic has often met with mixed results. Some parents choose to acquiesce, while other parents dig in their heels and opt to delay recommended vaccinations or stop vaccinating altogether. For the more reluctant or “vaccine hesitant” parents, the preferred methods of persuasion today are to educate them about the dangers of not vaccinating, or to incentivize them by citing insurance premium penalties for not vaccinating, or threatening to exclude them from a medical practice for being “non-compliant.”6
The one thing that hasn’t been widely tried by mainstream medical professionals is listening with an open mind to parents who are hesitant about vaccination and working as partners with them rather than taking an authoritarian adversarial approach. This may be changing. On its list of six recommendations for responding to “vaccine hesitant parents,” the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) first lists listening to “parents’ concerns” and acknowledging them in a “non-confrontational manner.”7
It is unclear whether this recommendation is a serious attempt to be open to parental concerns about vaccination and respectful of the informed consent ethic or merely another tactic to coerce parents,8 but the idea of vaccine providers at least being willing to listen to their patients is a good start toward developing a mutually civil and respectful conversation about vaccination.
References:
1 Wv K. Anti-Vaxx Mom Asks How To Protect Her Unvaccinated 3-Year-Old From The Measles Outbreak, Internet Delivers. BoredPanda.com.2 Fisher BL. WHO, Pharma, Gates & Government: Who’s Calling the Shots? NVIC.org Jan. 27, 2019.3 Thomas P. Education Levels of Non-Vaccinated Parents. DrPaulApproved.com 2019.4 Ward PR, et al. Understanding the Perceived Logic Of Care By Vaccine-Hesitant And Vaccine-Refusing Parents: A Qualitative Study In Australia. PLOS ONE Oct. 12, 2017.5 Gullion JS, et al. Deciding to Opt Out of Childhood Vaccination Mandates. Publ Health Nurse September-October 2008; 25(5): 401-8.6 Raines K. Tactics Doctors Use to Pressure Hesitant Parents to Vaccinate. The Vaccine Reaction May 31, 2017.7 American Academy of Pediatrics. Vaccine Hesitant Parents. AAP.org.
8 VAXOPEDIA. How Pediatricians Should Talk to Vaccine Hesitant Parents. VAXOPEDIA.org.

One Response to "Listening vs Coercion on ‘Vaccine Hesitancy’"

  1.  redpill  February 20, 2019 at 6:31 pm
    “listening with an open mind to parents who are hesitant about vaccination and working as partners with them rather than taking an authoritarian adversarial approach”.
    Not going to happen with the majority of Doctors that push vaccines. Why? EGO. The idea that a lay person is trying to tell them about medicine. They think they spent over a decade learning how to practice medicine and no google MD is going to tell me anything. Please note I said how to practice medicine and not how to be a Doctor or a Healer.
    PLUS: Regardless if they agree with the parents and know vaccines cause damage they have to weigh money against what’s best for the child. Drs' practices are given money by the insurance companies when they reach a 100% vaccination rate in their practices. This is one of the reasons Doctors were kicking children out of their practices. The family’s vaccine refusals were messing with their averages. Doctors Incentivized by CDC to Increase Vaccination Coverage -https://thevaccinereaction.org/2016/08/doctors-incentivized-by-cdc-to-increase-vaccination-coverage/.
    https://www.wakingtimes.com/2017/08/08/proof-surfaces-insurance-co-pays-massive-bonuses-doctors-vaccinating-babies/-https://www.wakingtimes.com/2017/08/08/proof-surfaces-insurance-co-pays-massive-bonuses-doctors-vaccinating-babies/.
    It is difficult to get a doctor to listen to a parent, when his/her income depends on his/her not “hearing” what the parent is saying.
  2. _____________________________________________________

  3. A Baby Died After Vaccination

  4. BY CAMMY BENTON, M.D.
  5. SEE: https://thevaccinereaction.org/2019/02/a-baby-died-after-vaccination/
  6. republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:
  7. 
I watched every mother’s nightmare unfold yesterday in a conversation on a local online mom’s group.  It began when the baby’s aunt asked frantically for prayers for her nephew, who had gotten his four-month shots that day and was found unresponsive in the evening.  Then we learned the baby had apparently bled from every orifice and had swelling of the brain. The aunt shared that they kept the baby “alive” to give family time to arrive at the hospital.  And then, the baby died.
    

    
The aunt told us the probable diagnosis was SIDS. When the family questioned the doctor about whether the vaccines (pneumococcal, H. influenza (HIB), rotavirus, diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus (DTaP) and polio, and perhaps hepatitis B if he had not yet received that at birth) administered just hours before could have caused this massive organ failure and death, the doctor denied the possibility of any causal relationship between the baby’s death and the vaccinations he was given. The doctor justified that conclusion on the basis of the infant not reacting poorly to the series of shots given at two months.
    

    
So a healthy baby goes in for a well child check with a minor cold, receives multiple vaccines and is dead within hours but there is no possibility the vaccinations played any role in the infant’s sudden death?
    

    
It is always tragic when an infant dies. As a family physician responsible for the care of many children, my distress is felt at a professional as well as a personal level when a child dies. Why did this child die and what could have been done to prevent this baby’s death and saved these parents from the lifetime of grief that results from such a loss?
    

    
I reached out privately to my colleagues for support.  Some responded with sincere sadness and worry. One physician friend recalled a night on call as a resident when a two-month-old died following a hepatitis B vaccination given earlier that day. The attending physicians wouldn’t let my friend report the death to VAERS (Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System) because they deemed the death after the hepatitis B vaccination to be “a coincidence.” My story brought back those memories for her and she felt awful and conflicted.
    

    
Another physician friend told me “It’s sad when babies die,” and went on to admit concerns about vaccines, but ended by saying, “But of course the benefits outweigh the risks.” In response to my concern about the temporal relationship between a healthy child receiving vaccines and that child dying within hours, a common theme among these doctors seemed to be, “correlation does not equal causation,” and “they may harm some but overall they’re more beneficial to the majority.” No one seemed interested in exploring the deadly correlation in this case or in learning more about how injecting not just disease antigens but many other chemicals, adjuvants and foreign DNA into infants might affect them.
    

    
As a physician, stories like this one make me ask some difficult questions. Since nothing in our medical training has prepared us to recognize or respond to treat vaccine reactions, and we don’t seem to be able to recognize death as an adverse reaction when it happens within 24 hours of receiving a vaccine, how in the world are we going to recognize any of the other milder warning signs of vaccine adverse events that could harm a child’s health? Is it possible that this baby had symptoms that his body wasn’t handling his earlier shots, and due to adherence to the prevailing one-size-fits-all mindset, those signs went unnoticed?
    

    
A colleague of mine stumbled upon a book called Every Second Child by Archie Kalokerinos, MD. Dr. Kalokerinos found that many babies who presented similarly to the baby in my town turned out to have vitamin C deficiency (scurvy). He found old studies supporting the use of high dose vitamin C, and began using that treatment. Dr. Kalokerinos won the Australian Medal of Merit in 1978 for lowering the infant mortality rate from 50 percent to almost none. He felt so strongly about sharing his findings that he gave his book away rather than selling it.1
    

    
If we care about protecting the “greater good” then why is it so politically incorrect to care about the individual casualties of what is presumed to be a “good” medical intervention? If we are so smart and have so much science behind our decisions, why would we not look at those who die after vaccination to find commonalities for the purpose of finding ways to prevent a vaccine-related death or injury?    
    

    
We should not be afraid to explore the relationship between vitamin levels, electrolytes, genetics, family history, breastfed versus formula fed status, method of birth, prenatal history and antibiotic use, and the specific and nonspecific negative effects of vaccines. It seems unethical for physicians to demand the full cooperation of parents in vaccinating their children with every one of the 50 doses of 14 vaccines currently recommended by the CDC starting on the day of birth through age six, only to be abandoned with a shrug and “it’s for the greater good” when their child is injured or dies after receiving those vaccines.2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
    

    
I want to know why the lives of those who might die from “vaccine preventable diseases” matter more than those who die from vaccines? If we don’t know why a four-month-old baby in our community died, don’t we owe it to that child and his family to at least be curious?
  8. References:
    1 Kalokerinos A. Every Second Child. Sept. 1, 1981.
    2 Buttram HE. Shaken Baby Syndrome or Vaccine-Induced Encephalitis? Hacienda PublishingFall 2001.
    3 Innis MD. Autoimmune Tissue Scurvy Misdiagnosed as Child Abuse. Clinical Medicine Research Nov. 10, 2013 (6); 154-157
    4 Ward  Iwasa S, Ishida S, Akama K. Swelling of the brain in mice caused by pertussis vaccine: its quantitative determination and the responsible factors in the vaccine. Jpn J Med Sci Biol April 1985; 38(2): 53-65.
    5 Beckenhauer WH, Gill MA. Immunosuppression with combined vaccines. J Am Vet Med Assn1983; 183(4): 389-390.6 Munoz JJ, Bernard CC, Mackay IR. Elicitation of experimental encephalomyelitis in mice with the aid of pertussigen. Cell Immunol January 1984; 83(1): 92-100.7 Behan PO, Moore MJ, Lamarche JB. Acute necrotizing hemorrhagic encephalopathy. Postgraduate Medicine 1973; 54(4): 154-160.
    8     Flexner S. Post-vaccinal encephalitis and allied conditions. JAMA Feb. 1, 1930; 94: 305-311.
    9 Karlsson L, Scheibner V. Association between non-specific stress syndrome, DPT injections and cot death. Presented at Second Immunization Conference, Canberra, May 27-29, 1991.
  9. ___________________________________________________________
  10. SEE ALSO:
  11. https://www.infowars.com/plague-inc-video-game-to-cast-anti-vaxxers-as-disease-spreaders/


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TRUMP'S CAMPAIGN TO DECRIMINALIZE HOMOSEXUALITY~FOREIGN POLICY OVERREACH

Ambassador Richard Grenell
FOREIGN POLICY OVERREACH: TRUMP'S CAMPAIGN 
TO DECRIMINALIZE HOMOSEXUALITY
BY RAVEN CLABOUGH
President Trump has launched a global campaign to end criminalization of homosexuality in countries where homosexual activity is illegal, NBC News reports. But while the effort may be considered a noble one, there is little hope that it will win the administration any support from the LGBTQ community. Instead, the campaign merely exemplifies the overreach of America’s foreign policy and has the potential to do untold damage to alliances.
The campaign is being led by U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, an openly gay official in the Trump administration. As part of the effort, the U.S. embassy is bringing in LGBT activists from Europe for a dinner at which guests will discuss strategies to advocate for decriminalization in places such as the Middle East and Africa. Officials contend that the campaign will likely require input from global organizations such as the United Nations and the European Union, as well as from individual countries where homosexual activity is not illegal. The focus will remain on decriminalization and not on broader issues such as same-sex marriage and other LGBT issues.
“It is concerning that, in the 21st century, some 70 countries continue to have laws that criminalize LGBTI status or conduct,” said a U.S. official involved in organizing the dinner.
The campaign is largely in response to the recent hanging of a young homosexual male in Iran.
“This is not the first time the Iranian regime has put a gay man to death with the usual outrageous claims of prostitution, kidnapping, or even pedophilia. And it sadly won’t be the last time,” Grenell asserted. “Barbaric public executions are all too common in a country where consensual homosexual relationships are criminalized and punishable by flogging and death.”
He added that “politicians, the U.N., democratic governments, diplomats and good people everywhere should speak up — and loudly.”
Grenell and the Trump administration are hopeful that redirecting Europe’s attention to the human rights outrages in Iran will generate more support from Europe for U.S. opposition to Iran. But NBC observes that the administration may be playing a dangerous game, as focusing on LGBT rights in Iran could also expose other close U.S. allies such as Saudi Arabia to criticism and potentially hurt alliances.
And despite Grenell’s efforts to protect homosexuals from abuse in other nations, members of the LGBTQ community seemingly have no interest in approving of anything the Trump administration does and are decrying the campaign as “racist.”
Staff writer Matthew Rodriguez at Out magazine is accusing the Trump administration of using an “old racist tactic.”
“While on its surface, the move looks like an atypically benevolent decision by the Trump administration, the details of the campaign belie a different story,” Rodriguez began.
“Rather than actually being about helping queer people around the world, Trump's campaign looks more like another instance of the right using queer people as a pawn to amass power and enact its own agenda," Rodriguez continued.
"The truth is, this is part of an old colonialist handbook. In her essay, 'Can the Subaltern Speak?' postcolonial theorist Gayatri Spivak coined the term ‘White men saving brown women from brown men’ to describe the racist, paternalistic process by which colonizing powers would decry the way men in power treated oppressed groups, like women, to justify attacking them,” wrote Rodriguez. “Spivak was referencing the British colonial agenda in India. But Grennell’s attack might be a case of white men trying to save brown gay men from brown straight men, to the same end.”
Rodriguez ultimately contends that the administration’s campaign is ultimately an anti-Muslim one disguised as pro-LGBTQ:
Grennell’s sudden interest in Iran’s anti-gay laws is strikingly similar to Trump’s rhetoric after the 2016 Pulse massacre in Orlando, Florida. After the deadly shooting, Trump used the 49 deaths as a way to galvanize support for an anti-Muslim agenda rather than find a way to support LGBTQ+ people. In pushing for immigration restrictions and a Muslim ban, Trump argued, he was the true pro-LGBTQ+ candidate. Rather than honor those who died, Trump used the tragedy as a way to stoke fear among the American people, and Grennell is taking similar actions with Iran — trying to reach an economic goal by painting the administration’s opponent as anti-gay.
In other words, no matter where President Trump falls on any of the issues, those on the Left will always perceive his actions as inflammatory and offensive.
As mentioned above, the campaign has the potential to hurt U.S. relations with some of its other Middle Eastern allies and exacerbate already-strained relations with Iran. It also compels critics of the Trump administration to question a foreign policy that seems to have a double standard for different countries, The Daily Beast reports.
“If this commitment is real, we have a lot of questions about their intentions and commitments, and are eager to see what proof and action will follow,” said Human Rights Campaign senior international policy advocate Jeremy Kadden in a statement.
“Donald Trump and Mike Pence have turned a blind eye to a campaign of violence and murder targeting LGBTQ people in Chechnya that has stretched on for two years,” said Kadden. “They have turned away LGBTQ people fleeing violence and persecution and sent them back to countries that criminalize them, and have consistently worked to undermine the fundamental equality of LGBTQ people and our families here at home from day one.”
Perhaps worst of all, it sets a precedent for intervention into the domestic affairs of sovereign countries by other nations.
So is it worth it?
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Trump admin announces global push to decriminalize sodomy

SEE: http://the-trumpet-online.com/trump-admin-announces-global-push-decriminalize-sodomy/; republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:
February 20, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – The Trump administration revealed Tuesday that it will be spearheading a global effort to get countries to end their criminalization of homosexuality, according to a report by NBC News. While the move is likely to distress many of Trump’s Christian-base supporters, it has interestingly been met with a cold shoulder by U.S. pro-LGBT voices.
The effort is being led by U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, a homosexual conservative rumored to be in consideration as President Donald Trump’s next ambassador to the United Nations.
“It is concerning that, in the 21st century, some 70 countries continue to have laws that criminalize LGBTI status or conduct,” a US official told NBC News of the effort, which begins this week with an American-hosted strategy meeting in Berlin of LGBT advocates from across Europe.
The report notes that the effort is “narrowly focused on criminalization” instead of pressuring countries to adopt policies such as same-sex “marriage,” and is motivated in part by Iran hanging a man last month for violating the Islamic nation’s ban on sodomy, a capital offense (the man was also accused of kidnapping two teenagers, though it’s unclear how both offenses factored into his sentence. Grenell believes the kidnapping charges are false).
“This is not the first time the Iranian regime has put a gay man to death with the usual outrageous claims of prostitution, kidnapping, or even pedophilia. And it sadly won’t be the last time,” Grenell said. “Barbaric public executions are all too common in a country where consensual homosexual relationships are criminalized and punishable by flogging and death […] politicians, the U.N., democratic governments, diplomats and good people everywhere should speak up — and loudly.”
NBC notes that the administration may see emphasizing Iran’s treatment of homosexuals as a way to get more European nations to join its efforts to contain Iran, though there’s also concern the push could strain relations with Arab allies Trump also wants united against Iran.
“People can disagree philosophically about homosexuality, but no person should ever be subject to criminal penalties because they are gay,” Grenell has written. The ambassador later told NBC that religious and social conservatives support his efforts, with Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo – both of whom liberals have targeted for their Christian beliefs – “absolutely” on board.
Stefano Gennarini, Vice President of the Center of Legal Studies at the Center for Family and Human Rights (C-Fam), lamented the move, saying that the administration “has not shown the slightest interest in spending even a fraction of the financial and political resources required for this LGBT effort on pro-life diplomatic efforts”:
Stefano Gennarini@prolifeadvocate
 · 
Pro-life groups need to raise hell over this. The Trump administration has not shown the slightest interest in spending even a fraction of the financial and political resources required for this LGBT effort on pro-life diplomatic efforts. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trump-administration-launches-global-effort-end-criminalization-homosexuality-n973081 …

Trump administration launches global effort to end criminalization of homosexuality

The administration is responding in part to a reported hanging of a young gay man in Iran, Trump’s top geopolitical foe.
nbcnews.com
Stefano Gennarini@prolifeadvocate
Pro-life groups must stop accepting GOP platitudes about the Supreme Court and the Mexico City Policy and demand real pro-life international efforts instead.
2:38 PM – Feb 20, 2019
Twitter Ads info and privacy
See Stefano Gennarini’s other Tweets
Despite this dramatic gesture in the name of “gay rights,” pro-LGBT media outlets are doubling down on the narrative that Donald Trump is still a full-spectrum bigot.
The Washington Blade published a report lamenting that the US-based groups OutRight Action International, Human Rights Campaign and Council for Global Equality weren’t invited to the planning meeting, with HRC’s Jeremy Kadden declaring that Trump and Pence “have consistently worked to undermine the fundamental equality of LGBTQ people and our families here at home from day one.”
Them journalist Matt Baume called the push “hypocritical” coming “after two years spent working to oppress LGBTQ+ people in America,” while Out’s Mathew Rodriguez penned a reaction titled, “Trump’s Plan to Decriminalize Homosexuality Is an Old Racist Tactic” rooted in a “colonial sense of paternalism rather than any true altruism.”
“The truth is, this is part of an old colonialist handbook,” Rodriguez writes. “In her essay, ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?” postcolonial theorist Gayatri Spivak coined the term ‘White men saving brown women from brown men’ to describe the racist, paternalistic process by which colonizing powers would decry the way men in power treated oppressed groups, like women, to justify attacking them.”
In this case, he argues, “Grennell’s [sic] attack might be a case of white men trying to save brown gay men from brown straight men, to the same end.” Rodriguez’s piece has beenwidely mocked in conservative media.
While Donald Trump has strongly supported the right to life and religious liberty, and pushed back against the LGBT lobby on issues such as transgender soldiers, a science-based definition of gender, gendered restrooms, and government recognition of “pride month,” some social conservatives have expressed disappointment that his personal approval of homosexuality negatively impacts other policy decisions.
The president has nominated a variety of pro-LGBT officials to government posts and judgeships, continued a number of Obama-era pro-LGBT policies, such as an executive order on “gender identity nondiscrimination,” publicly praised the liberal, pro-LGBT group Log Cabin Republicans, and declared that the Supreme Court’s 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges ruling forcing all fifty states to recognize same-sex “marriage” was “settled law.”
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