While the Biden Administration’s State Department has begun handing out grants to alleged proponents of “freedom of speech,” such grants thus far have only been given to groups advocating for far-left ideas, with no representation for conservatives.
Breitbart reports that grants for as much as $750,000 are being offered to groups that promote far-left views on such issues as “transgenderism,” abortion, and the sexual grooming of underaged children. In the State Department’s own “Notice of Funding Opportunity,” it demands that any potential candidates for the grants must “include women and girls in all their diversity; LGBTQI+ persons, transgender or gender-diverse persons in particular; migrants; members of marginalized racial, ethnic, and Indigenous communities, religious minority group members; and others targeted by anti-rights actors.”
The grant program, formally titled “Ensuring Freedom of Expression for Vulnerable and Marginalized Populations Responding to Anti-Rights Efforts and Targeted Attacks,” notes that funds will only be distributed to groups that “have strong support from and participation by lesbian and bisexual women, transgender and intersex individuals, and other gender diverse persons.”
The program describes its ideal candidates “will include a strong gender analysis that looks at the unique needs of women and girls, including lesbian and bisexual women, as well as transgender, intersex, and other gender diverse and gender non-conforming persons, women of color, women with disabilities, and/or women who experience multiple and intersecting human rights violations and abuse.”
The official announcement of the program also took direct aim at Republican efforts to scale back such far-left policies in various states, thus incorporating partisan politics into the program.
“Freedom of Expression for vulnerable and marginalized communities is infringed by discriminatory legislation, government persecution, targeted attacks on civil society and its operating space, and orchestrated attacks by those opposed to equal recognition of human rights for all persons, universally,” the release states. “Increasingly, targeted anti-rights attacks, including ‘anti-gender’ movements, have variously: mobilized public support against inclusive legislation and/or promoted and propagated discriminatory legislation intended to curtail speech.”
This statement is most likely referring to a number of bills that have either been introduced or passed into law in various Republican-controlled states, including Texas and Florida, which have cracked down on “transgender” surgeries for minors, banned racial and sexual indoctrination in public schools, or have severely limited abortion to protect the lives of unborn babies. Despite the criticism from Democrats and the mainstream media, such laws have proven widely popular with the American people.