A Global Boomerang of Bigotry: Contextualizing America's LGBTQ Rights Rollback
American far-right groups are involved in promoting anti-LGBTQ legislation abroad, such as Uganda’s 2023 Anti-Homosexuality Bill. Photo courtesy of Imba Hadebe, AP.
The headlines are difficult to miss. “Trump administration shuts down LGBTQ youth suicide hotline.” “Lawmakers in 9 states propose measures to undermine same-sex marriage rights.” And even, “Columbia Athletics removes transgender inclusion policy from website in wake of Trump executive order.” Attacks against the LGBTQ community in the United States have become more widespread since the beginning of the second Trump presidency, impacting sectors from healthcare to education and, above all, targeting transgender people.
The revitalization of anti-LGBTQ sentiment is not new this year, though. While LGBTQ Americans enjoyed growing social and political acceptance in the 2010s (perhaps most clearly demonstrated by the legalization of same-sex marriage in 2015), much of the early 2020s has been marked by an uptick in anti-LGBTQ legislation and a decline in public support for LGBTQ rights.
The actors and groups behind the resurgence of the American anti-LGBTQ movement are the latest chapter of a complicated global history beginning in the 1990s, when various Christian-right organizations were first founded in the U.S. to oppose progress on LGBTQ rights. By the early 2010s, most of these organizations had shifted their focus to socially conservative and developing countries, where they sought to halt the type of progress occurring back in the U.S. Now, with the rejuvenation of legislation and messaging attacking LGBTQ Americans, these organizations have identified an opportunity to bring their regressive activism back home. Drawing on strategies and networks honed abroad, the Christian right is increasingly involved in fueling the anti-LGBTQ movement at the local and national level. As such, the current attack on LGBTQ rights in the U.S. is not simply a domestic issue, but part of a global attempt to strip the LGBTQ community of its rights.
The Origins of a Hateful Movement
The 1990s were truly the decade that mainstream political figures began to seriously consider issues tied to advancing equality for LGBTQ people. For instance, Bill Clinton became the first president to address the Human Rights Campaign, America’s largest LGBT equality-rights advocacy group, in 1996.
In response, Christian movements in the US, supported in particular by the Catholic Church under Pope John Paul II, increasingly articulated the language that would define the conservative right’s opposition to LGBTQ activism. They promoted the need to defend the “natural family” and heterosexual marriage, and opposed the “sexualization of children” through “gender ideology.” These principles laid the foundation for various conservative organizations founded in the 90s, including the American Center for Law & Justice (ACLJ), the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the World Congress of Families (WCF), and Family Watch International. In 2007, the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) was founded by activist Brian S. Brown specifically to fight against the legalization of same-sex marriage in California.
Yet, within just over a decade of these groups’ founding, growing public support for same-sex marriage (the defining element of the LGBTQ rights debate in the 2000s and early 2010s) left the Christian right struggling to maintain its influence over the issue. Starting in 2010, public opinion surveys consistently found that more American adults supported same-sex marriage than opposed it. In turn, the NOM faced challenges recruiting musical acts for its marches and found its CPAC panels sparsely attended. Even conservatives acknowledged the political right needed to adapt its stance on LGBTQ issues–Jennifer Rubin, a formerly conservative Washington Post columnist, asserted in 2013 that “If you want to be a winning political party, I would suggest the debate [around equality] has already taken place in America. We cannot be at war with America on issues of fairness, on issues of equality.” The message on the right seemed increasingly clear: there was shrinking acceptance in the conservative mainstream for the messaging of the NOM and its allies. At least not for the moment.
Partially Defeated, The Movement Shifts Abroad
In response to these changes, U.S.-based far-right groups increasingly shifted their focus abroad. The Southern Poverty Law Center described in 2013 how the hard-line religious right, “on the losing side of a battle” in the U.S., was beginning to focus its resources on anti-gay legislation internationally. This pivot became even more pronounced after the Supreme Court’s universal legalization of same-sex marriage in 2015.
Exemplifying the trend was the ADF, a Christian legal advocacy organization founded in the US that grew increasingly active internationally beginning in the early 2010s. Among other efforts, the group helped to bankroll lawyers in Belize working to keep an 1888 anti-sodomy bill criminalizing gay sex with a ten-year jail sentence on the books. Similarly, the ACLJ, a group focused on promoting ‘religious freedom’ around the world, lobbied against efforts to decriminalize gay sex in Zimbabwe and Kenya in the early 2010s. In a pamphlet distributed by the ACLJ and the allied Evangelical Fellowship of Zimbabwe, same-sex relations are referred to as “perversions” akin to bestiality, echoing a longstanding belief among some Christian denominations that homosexuality is fundamentally immoral.
In addition to rhetorical advocacy, the Christian right was sending financial resources abroad. A 2019 report by OpenDemocracy found that twelve key groups from the Christian right in the U.S., including the ADF and ACLJ, had sent a total of $50 million to Europe in the period between 2008 and 2017. The money was largely used to campaign against LGBTQ and abortion rights, funding political activists, parties, and lawyers to lobby the E.U. and national governments on these issues. In socially conservative parts of Eastern Europe, the right’s messaging seemed to be taking hold as governments increasingly chipped away at LGBTQ freedoms, often despite social progress in the other direction.
Perhaps the most infamous U.S.-based group involved in anti-LGBTQ activism internationally is the WCF. Classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the WCF was launched in 1997 following years of cooperation between conservative American thinkers Allan Carlson and John Howard, and Russian sociologists Anatoly Antonov and Viktor Medkov. In a sign of the American far right’s shift towards international goals, Brian S. Brown of the NOM was elected WCF president in 2016 and has led the organization ever since.
Since its founding, the WCF has held 14 conferences and various regional offshoot events, many in Eastern Europe (Prague, Warsaw, Tbilisi, Budapest, Chisinau) but also in Ghana, Mexico, and elsewhere. WCF conferences have drawn international attention for featuring leading figures from the global far right. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, known for his government’s staunchly anti-LGBTQ policies, spoke at the opening ceremony of the 2017 conference in Budapest, Hungary, while the 2019 conference in Verona, Italy, featured a speech from Italian politician and current Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini. The presence of influential politicians at WCF conferences has helped legitimize and draw media attention to the group, thus amplifying the voices of the radical conservative activists–like Nigerian activist Theresa Okafor, known for equating homosexuals with terrorists–who make up most of the speakers at the conference. Such alignment with high-profile political figures has enabled the WCF to develop its network and amplify its influence around the world.
The WCF’s activism has translated to detrimental policy advancements, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, where LGBTQ people have long faced severe discrimination. LGBTQ activists argued that a 2019 WCF conference in Ghana added fuel to the fire of anti-LGBTQ movements in the region by suggesting that the LGBTQ community was a foreign conspiracy designed to attack African family values. Danny Bedaiko, a Ghanaian LGBTQ leader and activist, described how the WCF’s efforts to organize the anti-LGBTQ movement were partly responsible for an extreme bill currently under consideration by the Ghanaian parliament. If passed, the legislation would be some of the most restrictive in Africa, with even identifying as gay carrying a three-year jail term. Elsewhere, the WCF’s fingerprints were also visible on Russia’s infamous 2013 “gay propaganda” ban, which widely restricted public mentions of LGBTQ relationships and issues, and Uganda’s stringent anti-homosexuality bill of 2023, known for penalizing “aggravated homosexuality” with the death penalty. These laws have real consequences for the most vulnerable LGBTQ populations: in the two years after the passage of the Ugandan law, nearly 200 people were arrested for homosexual activity in the country and 365 individuals were evicted from their homes for their LGBTQ identity, many of them refugees. The drafting and passage of laws like those in Ghana, Russia, and Uganda are thus concrete proof of the potent threat posed by international groups partnering with local anti-LGBTQ movements.
WCF president Brown has repeatedly denied his organization’s involvement in promoting anti-LGBTQ bills internationally, arguing that anti-LGBTQ movements are driven solely by domestic forces seeking to protect traditional values. For instance, when asked about the Ghanaian anti-LGBTQ bill, Brown asserted that “In each of these countries people are saying ‘enough is enough’ with Western countries coming in and saying we are going to redefine the family,” and dismissed the idea that the WCF was involved in the bill’s genesis. Yet the pattern of the WCF and other organizations with ties to the American right working to nurture local conservative organizations, leading to a wave of anti-LGBTQ bills around the world, is hard to ignore.
The Big Comeback
The epicenter of the anti-LGBTQ movement is increasingly shifting back towards the U.S., where the Christian right is undergoing something of a renaissance within the Republican party. Influential figures on the current right-wing—from House Speaker Mike Johnson to conservative activist Candace Owens—have explicitly embraced ideology tied to the Christian right and have made their disdain for the LGBTQ community clear. The rights of transgender people have become a particular flashpoint, as conservative legislators respond to growing social awareness of transgender identity with a reactionary wave of anti-trans legislation starting in the early 2020s. With the Republican Party gaining control of both houses of Congress and the presidency in the most recent election cycle, further rights rollbacks seemed highly likely.
These developments have given anti-LGBTQ groups like the WCF, ADF, ACLJ, and others reason to believe their work might once again be effective in the U.S. In a 2020 email to his supporters, Brian S. Brown wrote that the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court was an indication that his home country might be moving back towards his side: “For the first time, there is a real possibility that horrific, anti-constitutional decisions of the past will be reversed. Marriage could be restored to our national laws.” The NOM has revitalized its work domestically, expanding its advocacy on the hot-button issue of transgender rights with the launch of its “NOT a woman” campaign in 2025. The campaign’s cover features Delaware Representative Sarah McBride, the first openly transgender person to serve in Congress and a frequent target of conservative aggression. Meanwhile, the ADF was involved in drafting 107 bills for 24 state legislatures in 2024, many seeking to restrict access to gender-affirming care and limit transgender children’s participation in sports.
The efforts of the conservative right’s advocacy seem to be paying off: the ACLU reported there have been 598 anti-LGBTQ bills introduced into U.S. state legislatures since the beginning of this year. Like the ADF’s draft legislation, most of the state-level bills target gender affirming care, particularly for children, and inclusive sex education. Since the beginning of this year, the conservative right’s ideology has also found a major foothold at the highest levels of government in the U.S. The second Trump administration has spearheaded the effort to undermine progress on LGBTQ rights at home, with various Executive Orders targeting gender-affirming care and sex education in particular. The ADF and other conservative groups have applauded Trump’s decisions, with the ADF citing their involvement in recent years in anti-LGBTQ lawsuits as a precursor to the Trump administration’s efforts.
This trend, unfortunately, expands beyond the American border. The new American administration’s stance towards LGBTQ individuals has made waves internationally, helping to strengthen anti-LGBTQ movement in various parts of the world. In Ghana, the anti-LGBTQ bill was reintroduced by MPs in March of this year. Ghanaian lawmaker John Ntim Fordjour asserted that in the new global climate, withdrawal of international aid would no longer occur if Ghana passed the law. “The global political climate is favourable for conservative values as demonstrated in the bold conservative pronouncements of President Donald Trump,” he said, dismissing the possibility of serious consequences for Ghana.
The success of the American far-right’s anti-LGBTQ agenda has been bolstered by personal connections between Republicans and these conservative Christian organizations that have been part of the anti-LGBTQ fight for years. House Speaker Mike Johnson worked at the ADF for nearly a decade, including a stint as senior legal counsel for the group working to maintain the criminalization of gay sex in various countries. Jay Sekulow, the co-founder of the ACLJ, served as Trump’s longtime personal lawyer and defended him during his first impeachment trial. Numerous other links between conservative groups and both of Trump’s administrations also point to their growing influence in the upper echelons of government.
The resurgence of the conservative Christian groups described above playing an influential role in U.S. politics should be contextualized by their decade or so of operations abroad, which can be understood in two key ways. First, given that these groups honed new tactics abroad, we can look to their international involvement as a blueprint for the type of advocacy they will pursue in the U.S. From ADF and ACLJ’s involvement in efforts to maintain the criminalization of gay sex in various countries, as well as Brown and the WCF’s staunch support for measures limiting the freedom of LGBTQ people to express themselves in public places, it is clear that these groups are the most radical of anti-LGBTQ campaigners. Their efforts across the globe paint an alarming picture of the path that the U.S. could be on if these organizations have their way, one in which LGBTQ Americans would lose any form of protection from their governments and even be prosecuted for being who they are.
In addition to providing a disturbing preview of what the Christian far-right might hope to pursue domestically, recent activism abroad has strengthened the movement tactically. International activism in the late 2010s gave the American-based Christian right a place to re-group after their failures at home and hone their advocacy efforts, providing a valuable model of tactics now being implemented back home. For instance, in the spring of 2022, Florida’s legislature passed the controversial “Don’t Say Gay” law, severely restricting discussions about sexual orientation and gender identity in school classrooms. That law bears a striking resemblance to Russia’s 2013 ban on public expressions of “LGBTQ propaganda,” with both measures framed as efforts to protect minors. The WCF played a key role in backing the people behind the Russian law and strongly supported similar legislation in countries like Hungary and Bulgaria. Anti-LGBTQ actors in the U.S. are drawing directly on the successful legacy of the WCF and its counterparts’ global activism to inspire and direct their work at home. Understanding this relationship between laws like “Don’t Say Gay” and the Russian propaganda law, for instance, also shows how the anti-LGBTQ movement poses a national security threat to the US, as geopolitical adversaries and autocratic regimes increasingly have more ideological common ground with the American government than could be desired.
All that being said, the role of international movements in domestic politics should not be overstated. Developments in the U.S. are not always inherently linked to global networks, in the same way that home-grown homophobia and transphobia exist in Ghana, Hungary, Russia, and elsewhere. But it would be unwise to ignore the growing financial and political connections between anti-LGBTQ movements around the world, or how the U.S. plays a unique role in that network. Further, the question of the numerous ties between American Christian right groups and the Russian oligarchs funding them also seems to point to a series of national security hazards that come from cooperating with radical anti-LGBTQ movements abroad.
Ultimately, scholars are increasingly recognizing how transnational networks form a key building block of anti-LGBTQ backlash around the world. It would be wise for LGBTQ activists to do the same. Understanding this reality is a first step towards building transnational solidarity and countering the conservative advocacy networks that stretch around the globe.
Sabine Ebanks (CC ’27) is a staff writer at CPR, majoring in political science and history. She can be reached at sje2124@columbia.edu.