WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — The Biden administration is launching a campaign pressuring other countries to encourage transgender treatments for children and abolish “conversion therapy,” according to a leaked internal memo obtained by the Manhattan Institute’s publication City Journal.
In an August 31 report, Manhattan Institute fellow Leor Sapir wrote that he obtained an internal memo by Secretary of State Antony Blinken that had been leaked by an officer in the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Service.
According to Sapir, the memo derives from U.S. President Joe Biden’s June Executive Order 14075 that instructs federal agencies to “safeguard LGBTQI+ youth” against “dangerous practices,” including “conversion therapy” for “LGBTQI+” people.
The Biden administration defined “conversion therapy” as any “efforts to suppress or change an individual’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.”
The leaked memo from Blinken reportedly goes even further, clarifying that “conversion” includes only those efforts to help a person leave behind a “transgender identity” and adopt a “cisgender one” (i.e., true biological identity), thereby explicitly targeting therapies that do not align with radical left-wing “gender affirmation.”
‘America, Exporter of the Gender Revolution; The Biden administration may begin pressuring other countries to push vulnerable youth into hormones and surgeries.’ From @CityJournal: https://t.co/vjSv1oLBCb
— Byron York (@ByronYork) September 1, 2022
The Daily Caller pointed out that while the term “conversion therapy” has previously used to refer to clinical efforts aimed at curbing same-sex attraction, “transgender advocates — along with the Biden administration — are increasingly using the term to describe healthcare professionals helping children come to terms with their birth sex rather than affirming their gender identities and putting them on the medicalization track, which can include puberty blockers, hormones and surgeries.”
Christian activists have warned that “conversion therapy” restrictions could target Christian outreach and even churches, since the Bible and Christian tradition explicitly affirm that homosexuality is intrinsically disordered and that there are only two sexes: male and female.
RELATED: Christian activists in Scotland threaten to sue over proposed ‘conversion therapy’ ban
However, in Blinken’s memo, he reportedly condemned a range of “conversion therapy” practices, ranging from “electric shock” to even “talk therapy.”
According to City Journal’s analysis, talking to a child with gender dysphoria to help him become more comfortable with his own body could be considered a violation of human rights under Blinken’s directive.
Moreover, the memo orders U.S. embassies to become reporting mechanisms to ensure that radical left-wing gender ideology is fully adopted in foreign countries.
In the directive, U.S. embassies are instructed to “submit robust information on the so-called ‘conversion therapy’ practices” of their host countries “as part of the annual Human Rights Reports,” according to City Journal.
Upon reception of the reports, Jessica Stern, Biden’s appointed Special Envoy to Advance the Human Rights of LGBTQI+ Persons, would craft an “action plan to combat the practice across foreign policy and foreign assistance lines of effort,” Sapir reported.
Thus, Blinken’s directive, according to the August 31 report, “effectively turns American consulates and embassies into global ‘gender affirming’ spies.”
Sapir warned the memo could lead the U.S. to classify first-world countries like Sweden, Finland, and the U.K. as human rights abusers due to their reticence to fully adopt transgender ideology.
UPDATE (26th January 2023):
Enoch Burke is facing severe fines of €5000 per week if he backs down in his stand for the truth about gender ideology.
SIGN: We stand with this brave Christian in his defense of the truth
Burke is facing a daily fine of €700 if he does not obey a court order barring him from attending the school he was fired from.
Having spent 108 days in jail last year for his refusal to abide by the court order, he was officially fired last week by the Church of Ireland (Anglican) Wilson’s Hospital School in Co. Westmeath, Ireland.
Responding to High Court Justice Brian O’Moore’s decision to fine the teacher €700 per day from Friday unless purges his contempt of the court order, Burke told reporters that the judge “wants to fine me for the profession of my religious beliefs.”
“What has become of us as a nation, to fine somebody for their religious beliefs?,” Burke asked. “We’re at a time in this country where people are at their wit’s end, with the cost of everything as we know...and Brian O’Moore, a judge of the High Court, has sat down and said to himself that not only will you have to pay for all those things, but you now have to pay for your religious belief.”
“He’ll make you a pauper for the profession of your religious belief,” Burke added.
PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION TODAY
The teacher declined to answer questions on whether he would continue to attend the school and face significant fines, or purge his contempt of court.
An Evangelical Christian who taught German, history and politics at the school for four years, Burke has consistently maintained that to use transgender pronouns would violate his religious beliefs and that his subsequent suspension by the school, and the court orders against him, were therefore unjust.
Jailed on September 5, 2022, Mr. Justice Brian O’Moore released Burke on December 21st, despite the teacher’s unwillingness to purge his contempt of the court order barring him from the school’s property.
Mr. Justice O’Moore said today that he hoped the prospect of paying almost €5000 in fines every week would “end his (Burke’s) utterly pointless attendance at a school which does not want him on its property”.
The judge warned however that the fines could be increased if they do not have the desired effect.
Burke was fired by the school last Friday and has shown up at the school grounds for work each day this week, despite being arrested and released on Tuesday.
He has until 2pm GMT on Friday to officially purge his contempt before the court or the €700 daily fines will begin to be applied.
Mr. Justice O’Moore admitted today that it was not “immediately attractive” to jail the Christian conscientious objector again as he theorized that Burke had exploited media attention surrounding his imprisonment last year for his own ends, while the judge also considered the schools suggestion to sequester the teacher’s assets to be futile.
Prior to his imprisonment, Burke told the High Court that “transgenderism is against my Christian belief.”
“It is contrary to the Scriptures, contrary to the ethos of the Church of Ireland and of my school,” the teacher added. “I love my school, with its motto Res Non Verba, actions not words, but I am here today because I said I would not call a boy a girl.”
“It is insanity that I will be led from this courtroom to a place of incarceration, but I will not give up my Christian beliefs,” he insisted.
Burke also promised Mr. Justice Max Barrett on September 7th that he would “never leave Mountjoy Prison if in leaving that prison I must violate my well-informed conscience and my religious beliefs and deny my God. I consider it commendable that I chose to obey God rather than man.”
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Irish teacher Enoch Burke has been arrested and jailed after refusing to use a transgender student's preferred pronoun, "they", in the classroom.
This insane step by Irish authorities must be called out for what it is: the unhinged intimidation of an educator by demented ideologues.
Please add your name to our urgent message to the High Court today.
SIGN: Enoch Burke must be freed immediately as an educator who upheld the truth
Burke was suspended by his school for refusing to use the transgender pronouns of a student, even confronting his principal about the irrationality of the situation, and defying a subsequent court injunction barring him from performing his teaching duties.
He is now in Mountjoy Prison, Dublin after being brought before a judge on 5 September who found Burke to be in contempt of the injunction by attending work after his suspension.
Burke, who told the High Court “I am here today because I would not call a boy a girl”, made clear that he would not abide by the injunction because it would violate his conscience as a Christian.
“Were I to obey the order of the board of management and the order of the court, I would have to accept that sticking by my belief in male and female is wrong,” he said. “It is not something I will do. It is in violation of my conscience."
“Were I to go into the school and bow to something I know to be manifestly wrong, it would be a shame and a disgrace on my part,” he added.
You can identify as a parrot if want but why should people like Enoch Burke be forced to play along with it?
— IrishConservative (@RealIrishCONS) September 2, 2022
This defiant attitude has now prompted Burke's arrest and imprisonment in an Orwellian debacle that should send warning signals to the watching world.
Mr. Justice Burke ordered Burke be "committed to Mountjoy Prison and remain therein until he purges his contempt or until further order of this court.”
Defending himself, Burke replied: “I cannot purge my contempt by holding my Christian beliefs in contempt."
Burke hugged his father and brother before being taken away by Gardaí to Mountjoy Prison.
Please share this petition with as many people as possible - it's clear that leftists will not tolerate dissent on this absurd issue unless we all push back.
SIGN: Enoch Burke must be freed immediately as an educator who upheld the truth
Thank you.
MORE INFORMATION:
Irish teacher jailed after refusing to use transgender pronouns - LifeSiteNews
RELATED: Transgender flag flies outside a US federal building for the first time at Health and Human Services
According to the report, Finland has slammed transgender medical interventions for youth as “experimental,” and Sweden has banned cross-sex surgeries for minors, urging physicians to engage in “talk therapy” instead.
The Daily Caller pointed out that the U.K., for its part, this year shuttered its pediatric gender clinic after reports it “was rushing children onto puberty blockers.” Meanwhile, radical gender ideology isn’t the Biden administration’s only form of left-wing ideological imperialism.
In June, Secretary Blinken announced that regardless of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision overruling the federal “right to abortion” established in Roe v. Wade (1973), the Biden administration would “not waver” from its “commitment” to both “provid[ing] access to reproductive health services and advancing reproductive rights” worldwide.
LifeSiteNews has an ongoing series of articles on the harms of transgenderism, the first two of which can be found here and here.