Michele Bachmann hopes Trump will reverse “evil” gay rights “agenda”
Former congresswoman says countries should not have to deny anti-LGBT religious beliefs to receive foreign aid
Former U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) is hailing what she hopes will be a new day at the State Department in terms of its approach to LGBT rights.
The former congresswoman believes that President-elect Donald Trump’s administration will reverse the department’s policy to promote human rights abroad, by making U.S. foreign aid available to countries that do not crack down on LGBT rights, reports Right Wing Watch.
Appearing on Family Research Council President Tony Perkins’ “Washington Watch” radio show, Bachmann said she expects a Trump-led state department to not make foreign aid contingent on advancing what she calls a “radical social agenda.”
Perkins asserted that under the Obama administration, the U.S. government “has been perverted to be used to advance an ungodly agenda” and “undermine American values both abroad and here at home.”
“You brought it up yourself with the State Department, where we’ve seen such evil come out of our State Department, unfortunately, where financial incentives are withheld from countries unless they advance, for instance, the gay agenda,” Bachmann replied.
“In a country that doesn’t believe in the gay agenda but the Obama State Department has said, ‘You have to have a gay pride parade. You have to make sure that you can show us that ministers are marching in these gay pride parades.’ What? The U.S. government is telling another government that you have to have gay pride parades? That’s unbelievable. You won’t get your PEPFAR money, you won’t get your USAID money unless you follow our radical social agenda?”
Bachmann also said that while conservatives are blamed for wanting to talk about social issues, it is the left that wants to push social issues to the forefront, even when it comes to the nation’s foreign policy.
“[T]hey are willing to use U.S. tax money — in other words, your listeners’ hard-earned tax money — to beat over the head other nations to come into conformity with lifestyles and behaviors that we know can be detrimental to people, and that don’t advance the American cause,” Bachmann said. “They don’t believe in religious freedom. They deny religious freedom to Muslims, to Hindus, to Jews, to — you name the group. They have to deny their sincerely held religious beliefs in order to get the money that they desperately need from the United States government. We are hoping that we will see a decoupling of that, and that instead, the positive interests of the United States will be advanced abroad.”
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