Secretary of State nominee Antony Blinken confirmed that the Biden administration will recommit to LGBTQ+ rights.
In a confirmation hearing, Blinken unveiled a shortlist of proposals that the Biden administration will enact to promote queer and transgender rights in the United States and abroad. Among those pledges, he stated that Biden’s State Department will reverse Trump-era bans on U.S. embassies flying rainbow flags in honor of Pride month. A July 2020 memo from former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper regarding pro-LGBTQ+ displays at military bases likened them to Confederate flags.
According to CNN, Blinken also said the Biden White House will appoint a Special Envoy for the Human Rights of LGBTI Persons. The position was created by Barack Obama in 2015, but after inaugural appointee Randy Berry vacated the post in the early days of Trump’s presidency, it was not refilled.
Blinken claimed that appointing a new envoy is “a matter of real urgency”.
These pledges mark a dramatic about-face from the previous administration. In addition to restricting embassies in Brazil, Germany, Israel, and Latvia from showing support for the LGBTQ+ community, Trump only acknowledged Pride month once during his presidency. After issuing a lone Pride month tweet in 2019, he went back to his annual tradition of ignoring the observance in 2020.
The Trump administration’s departure also marks the end of Mike Pompeo’s tenure as Secretary of State, in which he—through the Commision on Unalienable rights—claimed that queer and trans equality was an issue invented by “politicians and bureaucrats” and referred to marriage equality and reproductive rights as “divisive social and political controversies.”
With the Biden administration barely two weeks old, we are seeing increased promotion of the LGBTQ agenda. It is likely that additional pro LGBTQ legislations will cut deeply into personal and religious freedoms in the near future. Hopefully, the SDA PARL directors will speak out against such restrictions while there is still some freedom left to save.
Unfortunately our RL departments have had (with few exceptions) little to say against the licentious left, and lots to say about ‘Christian nationalism’. It’s time for them to be ethically consistent, instead of favoring their political penchant.
An ethical approach to religious and Christian freedom demands that we oppose attacks to religious liberty wherever they come from. Currently, these attacks are all coming from the licentious left; should they come from the other direction, we should oppose that as well.
Let us bury political persuasions, renounce those things opposed to biblical righteousness, and seek the Lord while He may be found.
****
“Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near: Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon” (Isaiah 55:6—7)