American Internationalism, Religious Freedom, and the Sexual Revolution

America has long been committed to an ideal of religious freedom. The Wilsonian internationalism of the early twentieth century, which really has informed American foreign policy since World War II has committed America to advancing Wilsonian ideals globally. The International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 specifically included religious freedom among American ideals to be advanced, and also established the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom to monitor religious freedom in each country of the world and make policy recommendations to the U.S. government.

There was controversy when the IFRA was enacted in 1998. It was opposed by the National Council of Churches and other liberal voices as one-sidedly Christian. But the obligations and activism resulting from the IRFA are now generally understood to aim at religious freedom for believers of all religions. There nevertheless has continued to be reluctance to reauthorize the USCIRF. The Commission thus remains restrained, requiring reauthorization every two years from Congress. USCIRF clearly pursues religious freedom for all religious groups, and the State Department’s annual report on religious freedom in compliance with IRFA addresses religious freedom for all groups and monitors all countries.

A Dissonance of Ideals

But with the cultural revolution of the last 50 years, it has become difficult to express and advance American ideals either at home or abroad in a way that commands a consensus across the American spectrum. An influential part of the population demands that moral autonomy be an American ideal. This means most importantly to its advocates that license for any kind of consensual sexual activity or abortion that may be wanted be included among the ideals which the American government should express and advance. 

In this regard, there was controversy early this year when U.S. congressman Gerry Connolly of Virginia objected to concern about the slaughter of Christians in Nigeria. He pointed instead to the penalization of homosexuality in that country.  This complaint was voiced despite the fact that the IRFA is concerned with religion, not sex. As emphasized in the linked article on reauthorization in 2019, USCIRF has long faced some animosity from the left, and reauthorization not uncommonly requires effort. Authorization of USCIRF for 2025/2026 has not been passed by Congress as one would expect on a non-controversial issue.

Baseless and Problematic Rights

But separate legislation, the International Human Rights Defense Act is proposed to address LGBT issues in other countries from a perspective of moral autonomy, and would privilege advocacy on LGBT issues over religious freedom in a Democratic presidential administration. This proposed legislation would undermine our support for religious freedom. Victims of religious persecution should be understood as victims, and have the mind of the American people and government focused on their plight, not sullied with the claim that religious beliefs are oppressive, which the proposed legislation could be used to do, and which really seems to have been the intent of raising LGBT claims in the context they were made by congressman Connolly.

But the sexual rights claimed are baseless and irrational. They have no basis in the U.S. Constitution and are finally based on the strength of the moral intuitions of those advancing the interests of the sexual revolution. No definite group of people is protected by claimed LGBT rights. People may experience inclination toward or engage in homosexuality and transgenderism exclusively, or to some degree, or not at all in the course of their lives. And sexual orientation and behavior can change (both ways). What advocates of LGBT legislation are endeavoring to protect is consensual sexual behavior which directly contradicts many religions’ precepts. Because it is advanced as a liberation it is thus a kind of “good news.”  It is supposed to be good news for all of society, and thus a threat to religious freedom.

Stated in another way, the self-determination doctrine that the sexual revolution has depended on is really the source of the irrationality and unworkability of the new morality. Because sex (or “gender” if one prefers to call it that) is now self-defined, it has become completely irrational. Anyone can claim any gender. The bill makes clear that LGBTQI+ behaviors and inclinations should not be discriminated against, yet now “sex” or “gender” could mean anything. Thus one could demand any accommodation, making any demand on others, claiming that otherwise there is an offense to one’s “gender.” As noted in earlier articles, Body Integrity Disorder, in which one believes oneself to be properly one-armed or one-legged (or blind or deaf) could be claimed as a “gender,” with a demand to medical providers that the body be impaired to conform to self-definition (as “gender re-assignment surgery” is now demanded). This wild irrationality is the natural result of making personal behaviors and inclinations a protected category.

False Equality as a Legal Dogma

Notice as well that once a “protected category” is established (which strictly speaking violates the principle of human equality) there is no legal basis for adverse action (discrimination) against it. One can argue that the races or sexes are unequal, but that has no legal effect in court. A problem comes when civil rights protection is too much at variance from reality. Racial differences are superficial, but (biological) sexual differences are not. Yet the sexes can be treated as equal. But personal behavior and inclination are not equal and cannot be treated as equal, and as noted above, the protected behavior and inclination cannot now be restricted to sex, because “sex” or “gender” could mean anything. 

Sometimes a “harm principle” is invoked to guard against negative consequences of abandoning traditional authorities. But this will not restrain the irrationality and destructiveness of sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) mandates because, for one thing, there can be no discrimination against a protected category, but also any idea of harm must be dependent on some good being protected. If one thinks that human life is a good, then it is not hard to show that abortion is homicide, or that homosexual behavior and transgender identity have led to enormous suffering and death in the form of disease, or loss of fertility, or sexual function. On the other hand, if self-defined quality of life (for oneself, at the moment) has priority, then those things are perfectly acceptable.

What the bill really proposes is the international criminalization of opposition to homosexuality or transgenderism. This is especially noticeable in the bill’s condemnation of so-called “conversion therapy,” which is defined as any expression or activity based on the belief that same-sex attraction “can and should change.” It effectively makes criminal religious doctrine holding homosexuality or transgenderism to be sinful. This is an obvious violation of both freedom of religion and freedom of speech. Neither freedom has any force if it can be set aside because people are pained. The bill invokes the claim of mental torture against opposition to LGBT inclination and behavior, but the condemnation of sin is supposed to cause guilt and remorse for disobedience to God’s commands. Hurt feelings should not be legal harm. 

Thus, the objective of the self-determination doctrine – to make law accommodate to individual life – is an impossibility. If there are any common meanings between people, they must hold whether people like it or not, otherwise, simple communication is impossible. If people cannot be classified sexually (or otherwise) against their will, then classifications become meaningless. Sexual liberation has really destroyed sex. It is people who have equality, not the lives that they lead.

And so the IRFA should be left undisturbed. All people face the prospect of death and giving an account for their lives, and so religious freedom is a good to be protected. The IRFA attempts to defend religious freedom worldwide. The American government can reasonably advance it overseas. But protecting rights based on personality traits and behaviors, consistently done, simply makes for conflict and chaos, as we see in our society today.

International SOGI Objectives by Executive Action

At least part of what would be accomplished by enacting the International Human Rights Defense Act has already been accomplished by the Biden Administration on July 12 by incorporating sexual orientation and gender identity into U.S. interpretation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. But as already noted, LGBT identifying individuals already have all the rights that everyone else does. The rhetoric of Secretary of State Anthony Blinken in announcing the new interpretation is typical of those who push for SOGI mandates, and implied that LGBT identifying individuals are being denied the rights everyone else has, but that simply isn’t true.

In addition, as C-Fam noted in the linked article, “the new interpretation is a radical departure from the conservative text-based legal interpretation traditionally employed by U.S. State Department lawyers.” There is no mention of either homosexuality or transgenderism in the ICCPR, nor was there any intention of the ICCPR covering such rights. Similarly, there was no intention of including homosexuality or transgenderism in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, although the U.S. Supreme Court read SOGI requirements into the law.

What is really involved is the use of law and policy to promote homosexuality and transgenderism, and support penalization of opposition to homosexuality and transgenderism. In this connection, what is particularly alarming is that the ICCPR includes a “hate speech” provision (Article 20), which could be used by a future liberal Supreme Court to overrule the free speech absolutism of its jurisprudence so far. This would be particularly wanted by LGBT activists. Indeed, as the C-Fam article noted, Secretary Blinken seemed to suggest that the ICCPR could be used to advance the coercive agenda of the LGBT movement in the United States.

Conclusion

It is widely observed today that increasing “rights” in society actually increases state control of life. This is because the state must enforce the new rights in particular cases, substituting the judgment of the state for the judgment of private parties. Even within the liberal democratic world, the twentieth century saw an expansion of rights from the “natural rights” guaranteed by the U.S. Bill of Rights to a number of economic and social rights claimed in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). In this connection it is useful to look at the constitutions of the Soviet Union, perhaps especially the “Stalin Constitution” of 1936. The constitution guaranteed innumerable rights. Yet life in the Soviet Union was rigorously controlled, especially in the Stalinist era. In fact, the Stalin Constitution was enacted at the beginning of the “Great Terror” of the late 1930s.

Freedom has been an American ideal from its founding, but it is not an ideal that can guarantee everything we want in life, and especially not at the expense of the freedom of conscience and free expression of others. America is not the world’s policeman. In pressing for the basic freedoms of our constitution in other countries, we must recognize that we are involving ourselves in their affairs and should restrict ourselves to the freedoms of classical liberalism as outlined in the Bill of Rights, particularly its first freedom, freedom of religion.