In an article published recently in The Hill, RFI Senior Fellow for Europe Todd Huizinga argues:

The Global Respect Act fails to respect morally orthodox religious people while the protections against violence it would provide, that might otherwise have merit, are already in federal law. The bill should be opposed.

The Global Respect Act, Huizinga explains, is “a measure meant to address human rights violations targeting people who identify as LGBTQ+ worldwide.” He continues:

All foreign persons who are determined by the president to be “responsible for or complicit in violating the human rights of individuals due to actual or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity, or sex characteristics” would be barred from entering the United States.

Huizinga observes, however, that the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, enacted in 2012 and expanded in 2016, already “covers everyone’s human rights, including those who embrace LGBTQ+ identities.” But unnecessary redundancy is not the only problem with the bill. “Also troubling,” Huizinga notes, “the Global Respect Act goes far beyond protections against violence” and deals with discrimination on the basis of “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” (SOGI). As is the case with virtually all SOGI nondiscrimination provisions, “the language in that section of the Act is broad and imprecise, [and] there is reason to suspect that the proscribed ‘discrimination’ could implicate morally orthodox Jews, Christians, Muslims, and others.”

Read the full article: “Does the Global Respect Act respect moral orthodoxy?“