Biden’s bold pledge on LGBTQ rights is being tested by Azerbaijan. What will he do?

Location of Azerbaijan
Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Just weeks after taking office, President Joe Biden released a historic memorandum that commits the United States to promote LGBTQ rights internationally. His timing signifies the priority of this shift to a values-based American foreign policy after four years of regression under Trump.

Words of this February 2021 pronouncement should be backed by deeds. Policies should have consequences. Where better to apply these principles than with the country ranked dead last on Europe’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Associaton’s (ILGA Europe) recent Rainbow Map ranking?

Related: The Pope says that God “doesn’t disown” LGBTQ people, but his Church certainly does

In Azerbaijan violent campaigns of arrest, torture, and extortion, especially of men presumed to be gay or bisexual and transgender women, are a grisly fact of daily life.

As if to underscore the point, two weeks after Biden’s directive, a 24-year-old Azerbaijani journalist and LGBTQ rights activist known as Avaz Hafizli (whose actual name was Avaz Shikhmammadov) was brutally murdered and…

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