In July, Council staff approached both the State Department and the U.S. Ambassador in Lithuania to raise strong concerns over a homophobic law banning public discussion of same-sex relationships, ostensibly for the "protection of youth."
Acknowledging that engagement on such human rights issues is now U.S. policy, the Embassy spoke with the President of Lithuania, who vetoed the law. After the veto, a State Department official thanked the Council for its work in seeking to overturn the law. Unfortunately, the President's veto was later overridden by the Lithuanian parliament, and the law will come into force next year. This fall the parliament stands poised to consider even more damaging legislation that could ban any public discourse that leads to the "promotion of homosexual relations in public places." The Council remains in close contact with the U.S. Embassy, and Embassy personnel are working with other embassies to highlight the human rights concerns in these provisions.

For more information on the latest move by the Lithuanian parliament to limit the rights of LGBT citizens, visit Council member Amnesty International here.

In a featured panel at the World Outgames Human Rights Conference in Copenhagen in July, Council staff members Mark Bromley and Julie Dorf, together with panelists from Human Rights Watch and the Dutch foreign assistance provider HIVOS, highlighted the important international steps that many governments are taking to advance human rights for LGBT communities. They noted that Brazil has been a strong advocate for LGBT rights at the United Nations, ever since it introduced a human rights resolution at the UN Commission on Human Rights in 2003. Other countries have carried that effort to the UN Human Rights Council, with France taking it to the UN General Assembly last December.  Sweden and the Netherlands have led the effort to include LGBT stakeholders in development programs. And both the Netherlands and the United Kingdom have instructed their embassies to work toward global decriminalization. On a regional basis, the Organization of American States has adopted two consensus resolutions condemning human rights abuses against LGBT individuals in the Americas, and through its annual human rights report, the United States has continued to document a human rights crisis for LGBT communities worldwide. The Council's panel outlined the range of diplomatic positions, government funding programs and human rights reports that have propelled government commitments. With noted South African commentator Mark Gevisser also participating, the panel then explored the impediments and hostilities that are still driving some governments to block further human rights progress.     

At the invitation of the Dutch Government and Dutch foreign assistance provider HIVOS, the Council's Senior Advisor, former U.S. Ambassador Michael Guest, was a keynote speaker at a mid-June conference in the Netherlands on how national efforts to achieve LGBT human rights can intersect.  The conference, held at the historic Peace Palace in The Hague, brought together activists from five continents.  Guest's comments focused largely on the extent to which the Obama Administration can be expected to play a leadership role in advancing LGBT rights around the globe. 

Click here to read his remarks.

in the Oval Office in June, President Obama signed a Presidential Memorandum granting limited domestic partnership benefits to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) employees of the federal government, including U.S. diplomats serving in the country's many embassies and missions around the world. In a written statement, President Obama recognized that it was the lack of such benefits in the State Department that forced Michael Guest, the country's first Senate-confirmed, openly gay U.S. Ambassador and now a Senior Advisor to the Council for Global Equality, to leave his diplomatic career, "because he believed that the country he served was failing to implement the principles of equality it espoused abroad."

Read Complete Press Release
Read White House Press Announcement
Read White House statement by the President on the Presidential Memorandum on Federal Benefits and Non-Discrimination

Representatives approved the Foreign Relations Authorization Act for Fiscal Years 2010-11. Importantly, the Act (HR 2410) has groundbreaking provisions that will strengthen the State Department's attention to serious human rights abuses directed against lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals worldwide.  The bill is now pending in the Senate, where the Council hopes that Sen. Kerry will include similar provisions in a parallel version of the bill that may soon be brought up in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Read Complete Press Release