Federal Government
USAID highlights work to promote LGBTQ, intersex rights in Latin America, Caribbean
Blade spoke with Deputy Administrator Paloma Adams-Allen on Oct. 24
Deputy U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Paloma Adams-Allen during a recent interview with the Washington Blade highlighted USAID’s efforts to promote LGBTQ and intersex rights in the Caribbean, Latin America and around the world.
Adams-Allen on Oct. 24 noted USAID has “invested” in programs that seek to fight gender-based violence against LGBTQ and intersex people in Honduras and Guatemala.
She, like Vice President Kamala Harris and other U.S. officials, acknowledged violence based on gender identity and sexual orientation is among the “root causes” of migration from the two countries and neighboring El Salvador.
“Migration is a human right,” said Adams-Allen. “Folks are allowed to migrate, but what we’ve discovered, particularly with the LGBTQI+ population is that, not surprisingly, violence against this community is a driver.”
Adams-Allen noted USAID in Guatemala through its Electoral Governance and Reforms Project provides what she described as “technical assistance to help advance LGBTQI+ rights through legal reforms initiatives.” Adams-Allen also told the Blade that USAID in Guatemala supports efforts to invest “more directly in local organizations as implementing partners” for election observation and in other areas.
“We’re looking to strengthen local LGBTQI+ organizations to enhance their capacity,” she said.
USAID continues to support the implementation of Colombia’s peace agreement that specifically includes LGBTQ and intersex people through the Youth Resilience Activity, a program that works with vulnerable young people across the country. USAID also works with the U.N. Development Program’s Being LGBTI in the Caribbean initiative that seeks to promote LGBTQ and intersex rights in the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica and Barbados.
USAID Senior LGBTQI+ Coordinator Jay Gilliam last week announced during the initiative’s second National LGBTI+ Dialogue in the Dominican Republic that USAID will donate an additional $2 million for economic programs for transgender women.
Adams-Allen noted USAID supports the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice’s Multi-Donor LGBTI Global Human Rights Initiative that supports efforts to decriminalize consensual same-sex sexual relations in countries throughout the Caribbean and to reduce stigma, discrimination and violence against LGBTQ and intersex people. Adams-Allen also highlighted CuéntaNos, an initiative in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras that provides information about access to safe housing, health care and other basic services for LGBTQ and intersex people and other vulnerable groups who are fleeing from natural disasters.
“It helps guide them to where safe places are,” said Adams-Allen.
Adams-Allen, who was born in Jamaica, was previously the president and CEO of the Inter-American Foundation. Adams-Allen was a deputy assistant USAID administrator and a senior advisor in the Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean from 2010-2016.
Jamaica is among the countries in the Caribbean in which consensual same-sex sexual relations remain criminalized.
Then-President Barack Obama in 2015 applauded Angeline Jackson-Whitaker, a prominent Jamaican LGBTQ and intersex rights activist, during a town hall meeting in Kingston, the country’s capital. Adams-Allen referenced the trip to the Blade, noting there was “definitely pushback, even against him.”
The Blade spoke with Adams-Allen a few days after Fox News reported USAID gave a $20,600 grant to a cultural center in the Ecuadorian city of Cuenca that hosts drag shows.
Adams-Allen declined to specifically comment on the report, but she did say USAID does “support the full richness of the LGBTQI+ community in Latin America and the Caribbean and that may include folks that Fox may not be interested in working with.” Adams-Allen further stressed that President Joe Biden’s 2021 memo that committed the U.S. to promoting LGBTQ and intersex rights abroad as part of his administration’s overall foreign policy is “a North Star for our work to advance LGBTQI+ programming, but also just our broader, truly development.”
USAID co-hosted 2022 Hispanic Serving Institutions/LatinX Conference in Miami
Adams-Allen on Oct. 20 delivered the keynote address at the 2022 Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs)/LatinX Conference in Miami that USAID co-hosted with Florida International University.
USAID in a readout notes Adams-Allen’s speech highlighted “the importance of diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility in USAID’s recruiting, programming and partnerships.” Adams-Allen noted the conference is the second such event that USAID has organized “to really to start to gin up more interest among Hispanic and Latino-serving institutions in working at USAID as well as being implementing partners, potentially, of USAID.”
“I wanted to go down and really to try to put some more energy into just underscore, now that we’re coming out of the virtual world, I wanted to do this in person, to really underscore quickly to this population … that there’s a place for Hispanic Americans, Latino Americans, Latinx Americans, at USAID if they’re interested, particularly in international careers, but even if they’re not,” she said.
“I think students tend to think that they have to be technical experts in global health issues and maternal and child health or emergency response. And they don’t realize necessarily that we need everyone, we need writers, we need lawyers, we need communicators,” added Adams-Allen. “That particularly this community has certain, what I would say, cultural competencies that makes them particularly aligned with USAID’s whether it be experience living in Latin America in the Caribbean, or family from those regions, experience navigating several languages at home or in school, in the workplace. So they already have some inbuilt some inbuilt strengths, that makes them particularly well suited to consider careers at USAID. And I really wanted to just bolster folks’ confidence and let them know that there’s a place for them if they’re interested in their support for them if they’re interested. And so that was really the thrust of my participation.”
Adams-Allen noted LGBTQ and intersex people were among those who participated in the conference, which took place at Florida International University’s Miami campus.
“LGBTQI+ issues are sort of crosscutting of the ethnic group that we are engaging,” she said. “We are always engaging with full diversity of that ethnic group, in that ethnic community. We definitely had participation from folks representing the LGBTQI+ community at FIU and among the Hispanic-serving institutions, so we’re always thinking about that population as part of our diversity efforts, our retention efforts, our inclusion and equity efforts with the workforce, as well as looking at our programming.”
“It’s so crucial to have that voice,” she said. “As we are thinking about our programming … it’s important to have people with the lived experience of the populations for which you’re designing, whether they be long term development programs, short term projects, or responding to humanitarian crisis, who really understand that experience. So, we need them, we need that population as a part of our team and we also do quite a bit of programming focused on protecting the human rights, the civil rights, defending the equal rights of LGBTQI+ populations in Latin America and the Caribbean.”
Federal Government
HRC memo details threats to LGBTQ community in Trump budget
‘It’s a direct attack on LGBTQ+ lives’
A memo issued Monday by the Human Rights Campaign details threats to LGBTQ people from the “skinny” budget proposal issued by President Donald Trump on May 2.
HRC estimates the total cost of “funding cuts, program eliminations, and policy changes” impacting the community will exceed approximately $2.6 billion.
Matthew Rose, the organization’s senior public policy advocate, said in a statement that “This budget is more than cuts on a page—it’s a direct attack on LGBTQ+ lives.”
“Trump is taking away life-saving healthcare, support for LGBTQ-owned businesses, protections against hate crimes, and even housing help for people living with HIV,” he said. “Stripping away more than $2 billion in support sends one clear message: we don’t matter. But we’ve fought back before, and we’ll do it again—we’re not going anywhere.”
Proposed rollbacks or changes at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will target the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Program, other programs related to STI prevention, viral hepatitis, and HIV, initiatives housed under the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, and research by the National Institutes of Health and Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
Other agencies whose work on behalf of LGBTQ populations would be jeopardized or eliminated under Trump’s budget include the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Small Business Administration, and the U.S. Department of Education.
Federal Government
Trump admin cancels more than $800 million in LGBTQ health grants
As of early May, half of scrapped NIH grants were LGBTQ focused
The Trump-Vance administration has cancelled more than $800 million in research into the health of sexual and gender minority groups, according to a report Sunday in The New York Times.
The paper found more than half of the grants through the National Institutes of Health that were scrapped through early May involved the study of cancers and viruses that tend to affect LGBTQ people.
The move goes further than efforts to claw back diversity related programs and gender affirming care for transgender and gender diverse youth, implicating swaths of research by institutions like Johns Hopkins and Columbia along with public universities.
The Times notes that a $41 million cut impacting Florida State University will stall “a major effort to prevent HIV in adolescents and young adults, who experience a fifth of new infections in the United States each year.”
A surge of federal funding for LGBTQ health research began under the Obama-Biden administration and continued since. Under his first term, Trump dedicated substantial resources toward his Ending the HIV Epidemic in the United States initiative.
Cuts administered under the health secretary appointed in his second term, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have put the future of that program in question.
Federal Government
RFK Jr.’s HHS report pushes therapy, not medical interventions, for trans youth
‘Discredited junk science’ — GLAAD
A 409-page report released Thursday by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services challenges the ethics of medical interventions for youth experiencing gender dysphoria, the treatments that are often collectively called gender-affirming care, instead advocating for psychotherapy alone.
The document comes in response to President Donald Trump’s executive order barring the federal government from supporting gender transitions for anyone younger than 19.
“Our duty is to protect our nation’s children — not expose them to unproven and irreversible medical interventions,” National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya said in a statement. “We must follow the gold standard of science, not activist agendas.”
While the report does not constitute clinical guidance, its findings nevertheless conflict with not just the recommendations of LGBTQ advocacy groups but also those issued by organizations with relevant expertise in science and medicine.
The American Medical Association, for instance, notes that “empirical evidence has demonstrated that trans and non-binary gender identities are normal variations of human identity and expression.”
Gender-affirming care for transgender youth under standards widely used in the U.S. includes supportive talk therapy along with — in some but not all cases — puberty blockers or hormone treatment.
“The suggestion that someone’s authentic self and who they are can be ‘changed’ is discredited junk science,” GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis said in a statement. “This so-called guidance is grossly misleading and in direct contrast to the recommendation of every leading health authority in the world. This report amounts to nothing more than forcing the same discredited idea of conversion therapy that ripped families apart and harmed gay, lesbian, and bisexual young people for decades.”
GLAAD further notes that the “government has not released the names of those involved in consulting or authoring this report.”
Janelle Perez, executive director of LPAC, said, “For decades, every major medical association–including the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics–have affirmed that medical care is the only safe and effective treatment for transgender youth experiencing gender dysphoria.
“This report is simply promoting conversion therapy by a different name – and the American people know better. We know that conversion therapy isn’t actually therapy – it isolates and harms kids, scapegoats parents, and divides families through blame and rejection. These tactics have been used against gay kids for decades, and now the same people want to use them against transgender youth and their families.
“The end result here will be a devastating denial of essential health care for transgender youth, replaced by a dangerous practice that every major U.S. medical and mental health association agree promotes anxiety, depression, and increased risk of suicidal thoughts and attempts.
“Like being gay or lesbian, being transgender is not a choice, and no amount of pressure can force someone to change who they are. We also know that 98% of people who receive transition-related health care continue to receive that health care throughout their lifetime. Trans health care is health care.”
“Today’s report seeks to erase decades of research and learning, replacing it with propaganda. The claims in today’s report would rip health care away from kids and take decision-making out of the hands of parents,” said Shannon Minter, legal director of NCLR. “It promotes the same kind of conversion therapy long used to shame LGBTQ+ people into hating themselves for being unable to change something they can’t change.”
“Like being gay or lesbian, being transgender is not a choice—it’s rooted in biology and genetics,” Minter said. “No amount or talk or pressure will change that.”
Human Rights Campaign Chief of Staff Jay Brown released a statement: “Trans people are who we are. We’re born this way. And we deserve to live our best lives and have a fair shot and equal opportunity at living a good life.
“This report misrepresents the science that has led all mainstream American medical and mental health professionals to declare healthcare for transgender youth to be best practice and instead follows a script predetermined not by experts but by Sec. Kennedy and anti-equality politicians.”
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