LGBT envoy says aid is not linked to gay marriage rights

During a visit to the Vatican this week the United States envoy for the human rights of gays and lesbians described the claim that western aid to Africa is given on condition that those countries approve of same-sex marriage as “completely false”. “It is not. Period. Full stop,” he said, writes Christopher Lamb.

The Synod on the Family’s final document last month said it was “totally unacceptable” that international organisations “attach conditions to financial aid to poor countries with the introduction of laws establishing marriage between persons of the same sex”.

But Randy Berry, the first Special Envoy for the Human Rights of LGBT people appointed by President Barack Obama this year, denied this was the case – despite the fact that last year the US cut aid to Uganda over a law that harshly penalises homosexuality.

“In the case of Uganda,” Mr Berry said, “my Government did suspend certain types of aid. That was the process of a very careful review about the types of assistance that would have gone into strengthening the mechanisms that would have allowed the state to prosecute people based on this awful law, which the Church also opposed.”

The widely condemned Ugandan statute enabling life sentences for various same-sex acts was overturned last year on the basis of a technicality.

Mr Berry added that the suspension was done “to make sure that US taxpayer money was not used to fund legal structures that would prosecute people based on their identity”.

On Tuesday Mr Berry met with officials from the Holy See’s Secretariat of State and Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace to discuss persecution of gay and transgendered people across the world. He also held meetings with government officials from Italy, which offers no legal protection for the rights of same-sex couples.

Mr Berry stressed he had not come to the Vatican to pressurise the Church on same-sex marriage but to discuss violence and discrimination against gays in countries where homosexuality is illegal.