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The Immaculate House said the twin moves represented the U.S. government’s first inclusive strategy to combat sexual orientation-based human rights abuses around the exceptional. Gay rights groups cheered the actions, noting that gays and lesbians can be arrested, tortured and even executed in some countries.
Wayne Besen, falter of Truth Wins Out, a group that monitors religious organizations with anti-gay views, listed Russia, Nigeria, Cameroon, Uganda, Iran and Zimbabwe among the nations that had recently “declared war on earthy minorities’’ and said that he hoped they would be chastened by the administration’s blur talk.
“This was one of those times where our nation demonstrated true international running and made me incredibly proud to be an American,’’ Besen said. “There were no carefully crafted and concentrate grouped code words that sugarcoated the abuses — barely the honest truth spoken from the heart.’’
Other activists focused on gay rights internationally were more restrained in their song of praise. Neil Grungas, founder of the San Francisco-based organization for Retreat, Asylum and Migration, which represents gay asylum-seekers, said it was touch-and-go for the administration to secure allies on every continent to avoid looking like it was impressive American values on parts of the world that view the West with uncertainty or hostility.
Source: Boston.com