EXCLUSIVE: Biden Admin Adds LGBTQ Strings to Foreign Agriculture Grants

This article originally appeared in The Daily Signal. 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture intends to cultivate the transgender ideology on a global scale using international farm-aid programs. 

That could mean attaching strings to international grants that the USDA doles out to support the Biden administration’s LGBTQ agenda, which President Joe Biden ordered in a presidential memorandum. 

The USDA’s Sub-Working Group for the Memorandum on Advancing the Human Rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex Persons Around the World identified three separate farm agencies that work internationally, according to a heavily redacted Oct. 18 memo obtained by The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project through the Freedom of Information Act. (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.) 

“The USDA Working Group is exploring additional long-term projects to further promote the human rights of LGBTQI+ persons around the world and coalition building of like-mind (sic) nations,” stated the October memo from Margo Schlanger, senior adviser for the USDA Office of Civil Rights, and Brooke Jamison, associate administrator for the department’s Foreign Agricultural Service.

USDA-LGBTQ-Working-GroupDownload

The USDA has more than 100,000 employees spread across 29 separate agencies with about 4,500 locations across the United States and abroad. 

A USDA spokesperson did not respond to inquiries from The Daily Signal for this report. 

The Foreign Agricultural Service, or FAS, issues agriculture grants abroad. The memo says it will incorporate “sexual orientation nondiscrimination protections into FAS terms and conditions for grants and agreements and notices of funding opportunities (NOFOs) to international beneficiaries.” 

It says the FAS is “investigating if there is a need for additional sexual orientation nondiscrimination training for those living, working or traveling abroad.”

The two other identified farm agencies working abroad are the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service and the Agricultural Research Service.

The working group was established based on Biden’s Feb. 4, 2021, presidential memorandum directing every federal agency to ensure U.S. diplomacy and foreign assistance promote LGBTQ rights around the world.

“In August 2022, the working group issued a data call to USDA agencies for information on international programs relevant to the [presidential memorandum],” the October memo says. 

Separately, the USDA issued a May 12, 2022, memo stating how it planned to comply with a Biden executive order issued on Jan. 30, 2021, to prevent discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation.

Among the stated goals in the memo was to “raise awareness of LGBTQI+ experiences, contributions, and professional and workplace issues” and to develop “guidance to support transitioning employees that contains the proper procedures and resources to facilitate a positive workplace transition experience.” 

The May 2022 memo on Biden’s executive action also called for developing “gender-inclusive language in agency internal and external communications,” to include “the proactive use of pronouns in the workplace.” It also included a plan to “update USDA Style guide for email signatures and business cards to include and encourage pronoun use.”  

Featured image, Tim Evanson from Washington, D.C., United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.