WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — The Biden administration is launching a campaign pressuring other countries to encourage transgender treatments for children and abolish “conversion therapy,” according to a leaked internal memo obtained by the Manhattan Institute’s publication City Journal.
In an August 31 report, Manhattan Institute fellow Leor Sapir wrote that he obtained an internal memo by Secretary of State Antony Blinken that had been leaked by an officer in the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Service.
According to Sapir, the memo derives from U.S. President Joe Biden’s June Executive Order 14075 that instructs federal agencies to “safeguard LGBTQI+ youth” against “dangerous practices,” including “conversion therapy” for “LGBTQI+” people.
The Biden administration defined “conversion therapy” as any “efforts to suppress or change an individual’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.”
The leaked memo from Blinken reportedly goes even further, clarifying that “conversion” includes only those efforts to help a person leave behind a “transgender identity” and adopt a “cisgender one” (i.e., true biological identity), thereby explicitly targeting therapies that do not align with radical left-wing “gender affirmation.”
‘America, Exporter of the Gender Revolution; The Biden administration may begin pressuring other countries to push vulnerable youth into hormones and surgeries.’ From @CityJournal: https://t.co/vjSv1oLBCb
— Byron York (@ByronYork) September 1, 2022
The Daily Caller pointed out that while the term “conversion therapy” has previously used to refer to clinical efforts aimed at curbing same-sex attraction, “transgender advocates — along with the Biden administration — are increasingly using the term to describe healthcare professionals helping children come to terms with their birth sex rather than affirming their gender identities and putting them on the medicalization track, which can include puberty blockers, hormones and surgeries.”
Christian activists have warned that “conversion therapy” restrictions could target Christian outreach and even churches, since the Bible and Christian tradition explicitly affirm that homosexuality is intrinsically disordered and that there are only two sexes: male and female.
RELATED: Christian activists in Scotland threaten to sue over proposed ‘conversion therapy’ ban
However, in Blinken’s memo, he reportedly condemned a range of “conversion therapy” practices, ranging from “electric shock” to even “talk therapy.”
According to City Journal’s analysis, talking to a child with gender dysphoria to help him become more comfortable with his own body could be considered a violation of human rights under Blinken’s directive.
Moreover, the memo orders U.S. embassies to become reporting mechanisms to ensure that radical left-wing gender ideology is fully adopted in foreign countries.
In the directive, U.S. embassies are instructed to “submit robust information on the so-called ‘conversion therapy’ practices” of their host countries “as part of the annual Human Rights Reports,” according to City Journal.
Upon reception of the reports, Jessica Stern, Biden’s appointed Special Envoy to Advance the Human Rights of LGBTQI+ Persons, would craft an “action plan to combat the practice across foreign policy and foreign assistance lines of effort,” Sapir reported.
Thus, Blinken’s directive, according to the August 31 report, “effectively turns American consulates and embassies into global ‘gender affirming’ spies.”
Sapir warned the memo could lead the U.S. to classify first-world countries like Sweden, Finland, and the U.K. as human rights abusers due to their reticence to fully adopt transgender ideology.
RELATED: Transgender flag flies outside a US federal building for the first time at Health and Human Services
According to the report, Finland has slammed transgender medical interventions for youth as “experimental,” and Sweden has banned cross-sex surgeries for minors, urging physicians to engage in “talk therapy” instead.
The Daily Caller pointed out that the U.K., for its part, this year shuttered its pediatric gender clinic after reports it “was rushing children onto puberty blockers.” Meanwhile, radical gender ideology isn’t the Biden administration’s only form of left-wing ideological imperialism.
In June, Secretary Blinken announced that regardless of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision overruling the federal “right to abortion” established in Roe v. Wade (1973), the Biden administration would “not waver” from its “commitment” to both “provid[ing] access to reproductive health services and advancing reproductive rights” worldwide.
LifeSiteNews has an ongoing series of articles on the harms of transgenderism, the first two of which can be found here and here.