Rebecca Oas
(ZENIT News – Center for Family and Human Rights / Washington, 01.13.2024).- U.S. President Joe Biden has given the United States’ highest civilian honor to George Soros, the investor and philanthropist who has used his influence to promote abortion and gender ideology internationally while working to censor his opposition and label them as “anti-rights.”
Biden credits Soros with having “focused on global initiatives that strengthen democracy, human rights, education, and social justice” through his Open Society Foundations. However, Soros’ vision of strengthening human rights involves taking highly controversial stances on issues that divide the international community, such as abortion, sexual orientation and gender identity, prostitution, and sexuality education.
At the 2023 Women Deliver conference, the Open Society Foundation announced a new funding facility “to counter the anti-rights movement and provide financial investment into the most neglected sexual and reproductive health areas,” including in particular “women in all their diversity and the LGBTQIA+ communities.” “Women in all their diversity” is a euphemism that expands the category to include biological men.
The emphasis on countering the so-called “anti-rights movement”—meaning mainstream social conservatives—is a longstanding priority of the Soros-funded UK-based website OpenDemocracy, which received a grant in 2022 for “$600,000 over 33 months “for exposing threats to sexual and reproductive health and rights.”
Some of OpenDemocracy’s projects included publishing stolen emails from a European pro-life mailing list, launching smear campaigns against pro-life activists and organizations, and pressuring banks to stop allowing conservative charities (and even the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops) to receive donations through their matching grant programs.
The International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF), a global abortion giant, proudly teamed up with Open Society to oppose “a transnational network of anti-rights and conservative forces and a financial infrastructure that contribute billions of dollars in funding to spread vitriolic narratives, promote regressive legislation, and attack our rights to control our own bodies.” According to IPPF, such work is tantamount to protecting democracy against authoritarianism.
OpenDemocracy has also campaigned against funding for so-called “conversion therapy,” including by accusing the U.S. Agency for International Development and other LGBTQ-friendly organizations of funding such efforts. While “conversion therapy” is often described in terms of outdated and draconian efforts to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity, activists in fact oppose any effort to help a client manage unwanted feelings and attractions through talk therapy. Moreover, concerns have arisen in recent years that blanket bans on such talk therapy are having the effect of fast-tracking young girls struggling with gender confusion into medical gender transition through puberty blockers and ultimately hormones and surgeries.
Soros-funded outlets also strongly promote the normalization and decriminalization of prostitution under the name “sex work.” They not only oppose the criminalization of those engaged in prostitution themselves, but also oppose attempts to target the demand side through the criminalization of those soliciting prostitutes or facilitating prostitution, such as pimps and brothel owners (sometimes called the Nordic model).
The Open Society Foundations also supports efforts to ensure access to gestational surrogacy “through the lens of reproductive justice and LGBTQ rights” through a project called Surrogacy360.
George Soros and his Open Society Foundations have been outspoken funders and advocates for the most extreme positions on sexuality and reproduction both within the U.S. and internationally. By awarding Soros with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Biden closes out his presidency with one final kick at the pro-life values he long ago claimed to espouse.
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