U.S. leads in global campaign for rights of gay, trangendered

By Ernesto Londoño

Tuesday, May 31, 2016 | 2 a.m.

Randy Berry joined the State Department in 1993, a time when gays and lesbians in the federal workforce tended to lie low. He was circumspect about his personal life early in his career — with good reason.

When President Bill Clinton signed an executive order in 1995 barring the government from denying security clearances solely on the basis of a person’s sexual orientation, the Family Research Council warned that “in all healthy societies, homosexuality is recognized as a pathology with very serious implications for a person’s behavior.” In 1999, when Clinton announced the first nomination of an openly gay person for an ambassadorship, then-Sen. Chuck Hagel questioned whether an “openly, aggressively gay” diplomat could “do an effective job.”

Today, Berry, the State Department’s first envoy for the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people, draws on that history often as he makes the case abroad that societies can and should become more inclusive.

“I know what it feels like to face a certain amount of discrimination and exclusion,” Berry, who has been in the job for a little over a year, told me. “I look back at how the movement progressed and how it opened doors for people of my generation.”

Berry is on the front lines of a remarkable effort by the Obama administration that began in December 2011 when Hillary Clinton, then the secretary of state, delivered a speech in Geneva proclaiming that “gay rights are human rights and human rights are gay rights.”

Since then, the Obama administration has sought to advance the view that gay and transgender people everywhere should be afforded equal treatment under the law. This principle, a tough sell in much of the world, is still being debated and litigated in the United States.

It has fallen to Berry to convince and nudge governments about a subject that remains taboo in many places. During his first year on the job, he traveled to 42 countries, including Uganda, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic, where gay and transgender people are widely stigmatized.

Berry said he has been surprised by how respectfully he has been received in some conservative countries.

“I don’t think these conversations are impossible,” he said. “But they can be difficult.”

Some leaders have been staunchly resistant to the gay-rights movement. Russia and Nigeria, for instance, have passed so-called anti-propaganda laws that make activism illegal. In Nigeria, a “public show of same-sex amorous relationships” can lead to 10 years in jail.

The government of Gambia, meanwhile, issued a statement last year in response to U.S. criticism of its persecution of gays, saying that “decadent and ungodly societies” would not change the country’s values.

In 2011, the United States established the Global Equality Fund, a private-public initiative to support gay-rights advocates around the world. Since then, through the fund, the government has spent $30 million to expand access to health care, legal reforms and police education abroad. The State Department’s annual human-rights report recently began including a section on the state of LGBT rights in each country.

Advocates have made notable strides around the world since 2011. Same-sex marriage is now legal in 20 countries, up from 11 in 2011. Being gay or transgender has been decriminalized in five countries since then. In recent days, Canada proposed sweeping protections for transgender people. President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico said this month that same-sex marriage should be legalized nationwide.

“There has been tremendous change,” said Ty Cobb, who heads global advocacy efforts at the Human Rights Campaign.

Berry said that one of his top goals during his remaining time on the job, which could be eliminated when the Obama presidency ends, is finding ways to more effectively tackle a problem that also remains a concern at home: the widespread discrimination and violence transgender people continue to face.

“As I’ve been traveling around, the most compelling stories of tragedy and perseverance come from the transgender community,” he said.

Ernesto Londoño is an editorial writer for The New York Times.