Does the Global Respect Act respect moral orthodoxy?

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.  

On Feb. 9, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Global Respect Act, a measure meant to address human rights violations targeting people who identify as LGBTQ+ worldwide. 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. 

The 227-206 vote in the House was highly partisan, and the bill now awaits further action in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It stands a good chance of becoming law.  

According to the bill’s lead sponsor, Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.), the Global Respect Act is “a common-sense, straightforward, human rights bill.” So why did Republicans vote against it? In a statement explaining her no vote, Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) said: “While the [Global Respect Act] purports to protect LGBT identifying individuals abroad, sufficient legal authority already exists to sanction groups or individuals who commit human rights violations against these individuals…. the bill’s broad language has the potential to sweep in non-violent conduct and even leaves the door open to imposing visa restrictions on individuals for their deeply held religious beliefs. This legislation represents the Administration’s aggressive attempts to push radical culture war issues … not only domestically, but also abroad….”   

Tenney’s assessment is correct: the bill is unnecessary and misleading, and opens the door to severe restrictions of religious freedom.  

Why is it unnecessary? The Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, enacted in 2012 and expanded in 2016, already authorizes the president to “impose sanctions with respect to foreign persons responsible for gross violations of internationally recognized human rights…” Magnitsky covers everyone’s human rights, including those who embrace LGBTQ+ identities.  

Also troubling, the Global Respect Act goes far beyond protections against violence. The section on “discrimination related to sexual orientation, gender identity or sex characteristics,” is a case in point. The word “discrimination” is commonly stretched, expanded, and distorted in today’s public discourse. And because the language in that section of the Act is broad and imprecise, there is reason to suspect that the proscribed “discrimination” could implicate morally orthodox Jews, Christians, Muslims, and others. The House rejected an amendment proposed by Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) that would have precluded using the bill to authorize sanctions “against individuals exercising their freedom of speech, religion, and association…[or] against individuals with sincerely held religious or conscience-based beliefs.”  

Perry’s amendment, however, would not have remedied the deeper pathology underlying the bill. Many American political leaders and other elites condemn as bigots those who do not support gay marriage or transgenderism. A White House Fact Sheet of June 2021, entitled “The Biden-Harris Administration Champions LGBTQ+ Equality and Marks Pride Month,” illustrates this point. In it the Biden administration portrays itself as the intrepid opponent of all kinds of imagined enemies of the LGBTQ+ cause: “Too many LGBTQ+ Americans across our nation continue facing discrimination and hate, … and some states are attempting to roll back the clock on equality with discriminatory bills that target LGBTQ+ people and families…”

It is typical for politicians, when dealing with hot-button issues such as those related to sexual orientation and gender identity, to ratchet the rhetoric up to a fever pitch. But, which states are “rolling back the clock?” What discriminatory bills are “targeting” people of a particular sexual orientation or gender identity? What official sanction is there, anywhere in the United States, for invidious discrimination against and hate toward such people? It is hard not to conclude that the unspoken basis of this inflammatory approach is the assumption that any questioning of gay marriage, any traditional moral beliefs regarding sexuality, and any understanding of gender as rooted in observable sex differences, constitute hatred and LGBTQ+ discrimination. Such hyperbolic and deceptive rhetoric stifles further debate and demonizes the morally orthodox. 

There is yet another problem. Many people, Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) foremost among them, link the Global Respect Act explicitly with the Equality Act, a bill which would apply to people living in the United States. As Religious Freedom Institute President Tom Farr points out, this bill “would add sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) to classes protected under the Civil Rights Act, such as race and sex.” The Equality Act would inevitably suppress traditional “religious convictions on sexuality, marriage, human nature, and human dignity…[and] expose persons or groups holding these beliefs to lawsuits and financial ruin. The law will mark them — like racists — as ‘hateful’ and ‘bigoted.'”

The Global Respect Act plays a role in the Biden administration’s push to enact the Equality Act, whether its advocates have that in mind or not. If the Global Respect Act prevails, and opens a path to sanctioning non-Americans who are morally orthodox, then the logical next step would be to pass the Equality Act and restrict the religious freedom of American citizens on similar grounds. 

Obviously, the United States should resolutely oppose violence and other human rights abuses against those embracing LGBTQ+ identities, as it does with the Magnitsky Act. However, just as the Equality Act stands against equality for all, the Global Respect Act undermines respect for all.

We need to preserve everyone’s fundamental freedoms. One indispensable way to do that is to uphold religious freedom for all. The Global Respect Act would do just the opposite. The Senate should vote it down.

Todd Huizinga is Senior Fellow, Europe for the Religious Freedom Institute in Washington, D.C. He is the author of “The New Totalitarian Temptation: Global Governance and the Crisis of Democracy in Europe” (New York: Encounter Books).