Melanie Nathan | Oblogdeeoblogda | June 24, 2014.
Last Thursday U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was the keynote speaker at the State Department’s GLIFAA Pride event. While the secretary gushed about his department’s accomplishments for LGBTI people and reminded us to be active instead of alarmed at the growing global anti-LGBTI trend, the embassies he leads were turning down visas for LGBTI Africans to attend San Francisco Pride 2014, whose theme is “Color Our World With Pride.”
Kerry said that he joins the world in celebrating Pride Month and “reaffirms its commitment to the promotion and protection of the human rights of LGBT persons around the globe.”
And yet the State Department was not willing to support the LGBTI visa applicants whom I’d invited to march with me in my San Francisco Pride community grand marshal contingent. The State Department denied seven people a platform to speak about the persecution in their countries, presumably for fear that they might not return home to the countries that persecute them. And after they were denied, a clear pattern emerged, and I pulled 11 of the remaining 14 applicants.
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