For years, the World Congress of Families (WCF) focused its collective efforts on one policy area: blocking rights for same-sex couples, and preventing same-sex marriage in particular. Now, however, it seems WCF, a joint Russian-American project, may be shifting its sights and rallying far-right Christian conservatives to oppose trans rights with the same intensity.
In numerous countries, WCF representatives lobbied heavily against equal rights for same-sex couples, efforts that included backing Russia’s extreme “anti-propaganda law” targeting LGBTQ individuals in 2013. Its work in this space was so pronounced that WCF was soon regarded as one of the leading anti-LGBTQ organizations in the world.
The group “has been linked to the extreme and international anti-LGBT movements taking place in Russia and Uganda in recent years,” The Advocate wrote in 2015. US News & World Report likewise pointed to WCF’s influence when discussing restrictions on same-sex rights in Nigeria and Uganda — all of which helped the organization recruit notorious homophobe Brian Brown to lead recent conferences.
However, this year’s WCF conference in Moldova provided less fire-and-brimstone talk of anti-marriage equality policies; as one conference participant noted, the speeches during the conference’s second half “were all so boring.” There were even muted references to policy “failures” across the West. Three years after the U.S. legalized same-sex marriage, conference attendees seemed resigned to the permanence of marriage equality. As WCF’s Nicole King said, it “often seems like there aren’t many [successes] these days” for anti-LGBTQ forces.
In its stead, though, a new topic has emerged that threatens to revive collaboration between members of the trans-Atlantic international extreme right: trans rights and gender identity. Much as discussions in this space — from Texas’ so-called “bathroom bill” to broader conversations about public discrimination — have become key policy issues over the past year in the U.S., international audiences are likewise grappling with their own dialogues on transgender rights. Read more via Think Progress