OTTAWA — France's ambassador for LGBTQ+ rights says Russia is helping sow a global backlash against gender and sexual minorities, and argues francophone countries should work together to counter growing polarization.
"LGBT subjects are among the most confrontational, the most inflammable, in international relations," Jean-Marc Berthon said in a French-language interview during his recent visit to Canada.
Berthon advises France's embassies on how to support local LGBTQ+ advocacy groups politically and financially. These foreign missions help him keep tabs on advances and setbacks in human rights. That means pushing for change in the roughly 65 countries where same-sex relations are punished by fines, corporal punishment, forced labour or execution. It also means calling out another roughly 60 countries that"drastically restrict" freedoms of speech and assembly for gender and sexual minorities.Berthon noted recent gains in countries ranging from Barbados and Botswana to Singapore and Sri Lanka.
Within Russia, paramilitary groups operate with impunity when they lure LGBTQ+ people into supposed dates, only to sexually assault and shame them on camera. This past July, Russia banned certain gender-transition surgeries, and long-standing bans on so-called"homosexual propaganda" are being replicated in countries like Kyrgyzstan."Russia is trying to spread its entire LGBT narrative everywhere. It also tries to disseminate its repressive tools.
"This subject has become a kind of crystallization point, in the positions between democracies and conservative authoritarian regimes," he said. Berthon raised that issue while visiting the Montreal-based group Égides, a global alliance of primarily French-speaking LGBTQ+ organizations that has government support from both Quebec and France.
When he visited Quebec City, he took in an exhibit at the Musée de la civilisation museum focused on gender identity, during which a protest took place outside that portrayed LGBTQ+ people as groomers and pedophiles.
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