The Next Anti-LGBT Export Target: Peru
This new trend is chilling, frankly. From Jamaica to France to Russia, and many map stops in between, a who’s who of American anti-LGBT activists, feeling defeated and increasingly marginalized here at home, are seizing the chance to stir the pot in any nation that might be willing to see them as soothsayers. It is, to the letter, the strategy we saw in Uganda a handful of years ago, when Scott Lively and other Americans started dropping into the nation and telling locals how downright awful we LGBT Americans are. We all know how that one played out.
Perhaps these exporters of animus get a free trip and a little feeling of importance out of these gigs. But in booking these trips, they are selling out their country and the majority of citizens who support equality for LGBT people, quite literally portraying America as some sort of fallen embarrassment for which we should apologize. They also have been inciting harsh violence against the existing LGBT population. They need to be held accountable for their words, whether spoken in the United States, Peru, or elsewhere around the world.
*UPDATE: Our friends at Right Wing Watch remind us that Liberty Counsel’s Mat Staver was also in Peru last fall, where he was treated like a visiting hero: Staver Awarded By Peruvian Government For Helping To Fight Obama’s Godless Colonialism [RWW]