The Biden administration has empowered a professional activist to travel the globe on the taxpayer’s dime to push transgenderism and gender ideology.
From Australia to Brazil, South Africa to Sweden, Jessica Stern travels across the world attending so-called Pride events as the State Department’s Special Envoy to Advance the Human Rights of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and Intersex Persons. Stern, who has boasted that she is the highest ranking lesbian woman, is paid an annual salary of over $180,000 and tasked with promoting far-left views on sex and gender, lobbying foreign governments, and assisting activist organizations.
Appointed by President Biden in September of 2021, Stern’s work has gone largely unnoticed by the media as she bolsters the president’s broader effort to leverage the might of the federal agencies and their bureaucracies in service of a far-left agenda. In Biden’s first weeks as president, he tasked all federal agencies to work to “advance the human rights of LGBTQI+ persons abroad” — Stern has been tip of the spear in that effort, and has stated that this mission is “U.S. foreign policy priority.”
Stern’s travels as Special Envoy have taken her to at least 22 countries on all six of the world’s habitable continents, including Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Botswana, Canada, Germany, Greece, India, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mauritius, Mexico, Nepal, the Netherlands, Panama, Peru, the Philippines, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, and Vietnam.
“Good foreign policy is inclusive foreign policy, and that means having senior experts on LGBTQI rights,” Stern contended in an interview with the Council on Foreign Relations.
LGBTQI+ Health 🤝 LGBTQI+ Human Rights
Proud to work alongside @StateDept Special Envoy Jessica Stern to advance health equity and human rights for all! pic.twitter.com/mIr1MTPCrB— ADM Rachel Levine (@HHS_ASH) March 16, 2023
Stern’s primary way of advancing her priorities — which include establishing “legal gender recognition based on the principle of self-determination” and addressing the “vulnerability of LGBTQI asylum seekers and refugees” — has been through global travel, which she uses to attend both official government events and local celebrations.
Stern attended a pride parade in Lithuania in summer of 2022, for example, where she rejoiced at the number of children she saw in the crowd.
“I saw a lot of kids at pride parades. They didn’t really know what it was about. They knew that somebody gave them a flag and there were a lot of people playing music and they got to dance along the street wearing stickers,” Stern celebrated. “And I see that as an incredibly positive thing, because when we’re teaching children a message of acceptance from a very early age, it changes their lives.”
Stern also traveled to Brazil in January 2024 to take part in a “trans visibility” march organized by Brazil’s National Association of Transvestites and Transsexuals. Stern met with a transgender Brazilian government official who refers to himself as a “transvestite sl*t.”
“We march for a future in which every trans person can live proudly and fearlessly,” Stern posted on X.
I joined @larratsymmy & Coordinator for Indigenous LGBTQI+ Policy Larissa Pankararu at @AntraBrasil's 1st National 'Marsha' for Trans Day of Visibility celebrating all trans & nonbinary Brazilians. We march for a future in which every trans person can live proudly and fearlessly. pic.twitter.com/XMOBizCmya
— Special Envoy Jessica Stern (@US_SE_LGBTQI) January 29, 2024
A State Department spokeswoman said it is “committed to promoting and protecting the freedom, dignity, and equality of all persons – including transgender, non-binary, and gender non-conforming persons – around the world.”
“Teaching messages of acceptance is vital for both recognizing the humanity of and combating violence and discrimination against LGBTQI+ persons,” the spokeswoman added.
While in Brazil, Stern talked to civil society organizations about “the importance of excluding gender markers from the national ID system,” as well as “tackling conversion therapy practices, and uniting with Indigenous and Afro-descendant LGBTQI+ persons to end intersecting forms of discrimination.” The State Department Special Envoy also met with Brazil’s Minister of Human Rights, Foreign Affairs, Health, Labor, Justice, and Native People.
The South American country was just one of her many travel destinations. Just months earlier in October, Stern traveled to Stockholm, Sweden to “meet with members of the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, and members of Swedish Parliament.”
While in Stockholm, Stern also attended a meeting of the Global Equality Fund (GEF), a public-private partnership between government entities like the State Department and private sector entities that exists to provide “critical resources to civil society organizations (CSOs) and human rights defenders, including those working to increase the visibility and empowerment of queer women, transgender, intersex people, and members of other marginalized LGBTQI+ communities.” The GEF funds activists across the globe to “counter anti-gender ideology” and, in the words of Stern, “allows brave activists to continue working for change and to create more inclusive democracies.”
The jet-setting Stern also went to South Africa and Mauritius, a small island nation off the coast of Africa, in August 2023 to meet with “civil society, officials from the Government of Mauritius, and likeminded international partners.”
The Special Envoy joined a South African television program to discuss a conference she attended in Mauritius, stating that activists in the country are fighting for “legal gender recognition based on the principle of self-determination” and “national actions plans for LGBTQI rights that have adequate funding and staff.”
In July 2023, Stern traveled to Mexico City, Mexico to meet with activists and deliver a keynote address at the Victory Institute’s Conference of LGBTI Political Leaders of the Americas and the Caribbean, where she boasted that she is the highest ranking lesbian woman at the State Department.
She also criticized bills in the United States that sought to shield children from sexualized drag performances and from medical interventions that seek to change their sex. “What an absolute tragedy,” Stern complained.
It was a busy summer for the Special Envoy, who also ventured to Toronto and Ottawa in June to receive a reward recognizing Stern for “her commitment to 2SLGBTQI+ persons in Canada and around the world.” In Ottawa, she met with “members of Parliament and Global Affairs Canada senior officials to discuss their commitment to jointly advancing respect for human rights for LGBTQI+ persons.”
The State Department official traveled to Australia, Argentina, Peru, and Panama, speaking at a pride festival and meeting with government officials and activists.
Before joining the State Department, Stern was previously the Executive Director of Outright International, a New York-based LGBT activist organization. The organization was at the forefront of pushing transgender ideology in the United Nations, hosting a United Nations Women event in 2019 called “Gender Diversity: Beyond the Binary,” the “first high-level meeting on gender diversity and non-binary identities held at UN headquarters.”
Stern’s position, first created under President Obama, was left vacant under President Trump before being reestablished by Biden, who has pushed transgender ideology and the diversity, equity, and inclusion agenda throughout the federal agencies.
While the Biden administration has leveraged the federal bureaucracy to advance leftwing dogmas across agencies, former Trump officials are crafting plans to fire those who would obstruct the president’s agenda and hire new officials.
Under another Trump administration, the president could reimpose an executive order called Schedule F, an action that would enable the president to fire thousands of bureaucrats who have influence over policy. “We will pass critical reforms making every executive branch employee fireable by the president of the United States,” Trump said at a rally, touting the plan.
Others are preparing to fill in the gap left by outgoing officials, assembling a personnel database of those who might serve in the next administration through the Project 2025 Presidential Transition Project, an initiative from the Heritage Foundation that seeks to “pave the way for an effective conservative Administration.”
“It is not enough for conservatives to win elections. If we are going to rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left, we need both a governing agenda and the right people in place, ready to carry this agenda out on day one of the next conservative administration,” Project 2025 states. In addition to creating a personnel database, the initiative has also established a policy agenda, training for its talent pool, and a 180-day plan for the next administration, all while assembling a coalition of over 100 conservative organizations.
But Stern is aware of efforts to discontinue her position, explaining in an interview how the State Department hopes to permanently enshrine a focus on LGBT ideology. “We act with an eye on the question of how do we institutionalize and depoliticize this agenda.”
“People are policy, so we need people who are inside the institution,” the Special Envoy added. “I believe that scrappy LGBT human rights defenders deserve power.”
Stern openly addressed the possibility that the next administration could remove her position, letting her go in the process. “We can’t say for sure that we’ll exist in two years,” Stern lamented. “Our eye is always on the clock.”