This Gay Week 10: How Trump’s Anti-DEI Crusade Fuels Global LGBTQ Backlash

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/11/30

Karel Bouley is a trailblazing LGBTQ broadcaster, entertainer, and activist. As half of the first openly gay duo in U.S. drive-time radio, he made history while shaping California law on LGBTQ wrongful death cases. Karel rose to prominence as the #1 talk show host on KFI AM 640 in Los Angeles and KGO AM 810 in San Francisco, later expanding to Free Speech TV and the Karel Cast podcast. His work spans journalism (HuffPost, The Advocate, Billboard), television (CNN, MSNBC), and the music industry. A voting member of NARAS, GALECA, and SAG-AFTRA, Karel now lives and creates in Las Vegas.

In this wide-ranging, darkly funny conversation, Bouley and Scott Douglas Jacobsen dissect how Trump-era “anti-DEI” doctrine is reshaping U.S. foreign policy and fueling anti-LGBTQ legislation from Ghana to Eastern Europe and beyond. They track corporate retreat from Pride funding, Pride festivals collapsing on artists and small vendors, and American evangelicals exporting homophobic campaigns across Africa. The pair highlight resistance too: Moldova’s fragile pro-EU opening, a Dominican court’s decriminalization ruling, and Josh Newberry breaking silence on male rape stigma. Threading through is Bouley’s insistence that biblical ethics demand empathy, not persecution, and that global backlash signals both danger and progress.

Interview conducted November 21, 2025, in the afternoon Pacific Time.

Karel Bouley: So today, during this great week, we’re starting with an oxymoron from the moron-in-chief of the United States of America.

It’s the infringement on human rights that are the opposite of what are defined as such. According to reporting from the State Department, new U.S. rules say that countries with diversity policies — countries that recognize diversity — are infringing on human rights.

We are in the theater of the absurd, where the U.S. president, who yesterday called for the death of Democrats, told people not to follow illegal orders. “Don’t follow an illegal order” seems self-explanatory — but whatever. He’s also worried that the Epstein files will come out, but they won’t, because he launched an investigation the Friday before the vote.

That means they don’t release any files if there’s an ongoing investigation — and there is, because he launched it. So those documents will not be forthcoming. As far as I know, there are no gay people in them, no trafficking of young boys. Epstein was clearly a one-gender kind of guy. The new rules state that countries enforcing race or gender diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) will now be at risk of the Trump administration deeming them infringers of human rights. The State Department issued new rules to all U.S. embassies and consulates compiling its annual report. The instructions deem countries that subsidize abortion or facilitate mass migration as infringing on human rights.

That means Ireland, France, and Canada — you are all now considered infringers. The changes, which the State Department says are intended to stop “destructive ideologies” — meaning racial and gender equity, diversity, and inclusion — have been condemned by human rights campaigners who argue that the Trump administration is redefining long-established human rights principles to pursue its ideological goals and impose them on other nations. 

It’s a huge shift in Washington and in the State Department’s foreign policy and how it treats other countries. A senior State Department official said the new rules were “a tool to change the behavior of governments.” Donald Trump is trying to change the behavior of governments that do not agree with his anti-DEI policies. He is doing that by labeling them as infringers of human rights. Nothing has made sense in eleven months now.

Urza Zeya, a former senior State Department official who runs the charity Human Rights First, said the Trump administration was weaponizing international human rights for domestic partisan ends. Again, no surprise there. Will other countries respond to this? Will they care? Will it change anything in their relations with the United States? We don’t know yet.

In other words, we don’t know if there’s going to be some financial or political risk once they’re labeled as infringers of human rights. But we’ll see. I don’t think Canada, Ireland, France, the U.K., or any civilized nation is going to change its DEI policies — policies their people support — based on what Donald Trump wants, given that he’s unraveling quickly and his party is distancing itself from him more every day. He didn’t get the Epstein vote he wanted. He wanted those files blocked, but senators said no. Democrats won in the last election a few weeks ago. He called for an end to the filibuster and told his party to end it. They did not.

There are many signs of his unraveling, and his approval rating is now the lowest of any sitting U.S. president in modern history. It’s down to 34%, which means, basically, the Confederacy has a higher approval rating. The Coast Guard was recently instructed that swastikas, Confederate flags, and nooses were no longer considered hate symbols and were no longer banned.

However, overnight there was enormous backlash from both parties, and today they reinstated the policy affirming that, yes, those are hate symbols. You think a swastika might be considered hateful? His approval rating is at an all-time low. His party is fracturing — he even lost Marjorie Taylor Greene. How much lower can you get?

So will other countries also respond in kind — meaning, will they simply ignore him now? We’ll see. But a story that says new U.S. rules label countries with DEI policies as infringing on human rights boggles the mind. How could that story even be written?

Jacobsen: The twenty-eight-point peace plan is another example of his growing isolation from the European continent, outside of Russia. 

Bouley: Generally speaking, we’re seeing that happen again. This morning, it was announced that his so-called Ukrainian peace plan — I was watching the BBC — is being rejected by most European countries. They say, “You’re giving Vladimir Putin everything he wants.” But of course, that’s because they’re buddies in a special kind of way. Brokeback Moscow.

The next story — we reported on this a bit earlier — is about Manchester Pride not being able to pay its bills. Now another one, Party in the Park, was scheduled to take place at Trinity Park in Ipswich, U.K., in July. It promised a lineup of over a hundred stalls, food, entertainment, and funfair rides. Right before launch, they pulled the plug.

They said they didn’t have the funding they thought they were going to get, and there were other reasons, but they left all the vendors and artists stranded. They are now the second festival to do this — first Manchester Pride, now Party in the Park in Ipswich. Sam Arbonne, the founder, was contacted by the BBC and asked if the money he’d been paid would be refunded.

He simply said, “We prefer not to discuss it.” I’ll take that as a no. 

Jacobsen: Many of these vendors are regular people, so a thousand pounds or euros is a significant chunk of money for the month.

Bouley: As an entertainer myself, I’ll tell you — if you’ve booked a gig that’s supposed to pay you fifteen hundred pounds or euros, and that gig falls through right before the event, especially in July — the peak season for LGBTQ entertainers — you’ve already turned down other gigs. It’s too late to rebook something that close to the date. You’ve lost that money, and they are not owning up to it.

Graham Thurston — who sounds like someone from a sitcom — is the events and estate manager at Trinity Park. He said the event was canceled when the outstanding balance required to pay the venue wasn’t paid. Typically, when you book an event, you pay fifty percent upfront and fifty percent right before the date, so the venue gets its money. He likely paid the deposit but didn’t have the rest when it was due.

While ticket holders were reportedly able to get refunds, traders who paid anywhere from one hundred to one thousand euros for a plot were not. You pay one thousand euros hoping to make five or ten thousand at your booth, so not only are you losing that income, you’re also out the thousand you spent for the spot. Many of these people rent tents, equipment, and more — it adds up fast.

It’s a very sad thing. It’s the second major festival to fail to pay, and it’s part of an alarming trend that’s emerging.

Jacobsen: When did you last see this happening in the Western context?

Bouley: This past year, since Trump took office. Before that, either LGBTQ organizations didn’t make commitments they couldn’t keep — meaning they told artists upfront, “We can’t pay you; come if you want” — or they paid only the top two or three headliners. Let’s say Grace Jones, who does Pride festivals — they’d pay Grace and maybe one or two others.

Then maybe a couple of artists under Grace, and everyone else was expected to donate their time — because they’re gay, and “don’t you want to donate your time to the festival?” Festivals in America, first, don’t normally make that kind of commitment, and second, up until Trump, had the funds to pay artists through DEI funding, grants, and other sources. Once Trump took office, that money dried up immediately. It didn’t trickle — it stopped.

Corporations, the minute Trump took office — as we’ve discussed — saw that they no longer had to pay to be nice to the gays. So they cut their funding immediately. Several Pride organizations in the United States had to either cancel their festivals, scale them back, or tell entertainers they couldn’t pay them. But they told them in advance; they didn’t wait until the day of the event and say, “Oops, guess what?” That’s the difference. In America, this has been happening since Trump.

I don’t know if this is happening in the U.K. because of Trump, but as we see, he’s trying to export his hatred — and some of it is sticking. I was going to send you a story, but didn’t, about another African nation — one of now thirty — that are officially anti-gay. I saw an incredible short documentary showing that Africa didn’t used to be anti-gay.

Everyone assumes Africa has always been this way. No — most African nations didn’t care. First, they had bigger issues to address, and second, it wasn’t on their radar. They didn’t concern themselves with the private lives of their citizens. But for the last thirty years, the religious right in America has spent vast sums exporting their hatred to other countries.

They’ve been sending people, making financial investments, paying individuals and governments to be anti-gay. Evangelicals and other anti-gay groups in America — including the authors of Project 2025 — have intentionally exported their hatred to African nations. It was a deliberate effort, not a coincidence. They decided years ago that they wanted African nations to be anti-gay.

And now they are. Most turned that way because it was profitable — not because their people were anti-gay. Typically, Africans themselves are not anti-gay. The average person isn’t. But their governments — that’s a different story entirely. So yes, that’s not good.

Let’s go to Ireland, shall we? I love Ireland. Been there many times. Enoch Burke is returning to prison. Who is this man?

He’s an Irish teacher with what I call the J.K. Rowling disease — a serious problem with trans people. He and members of his family, according to Justice Cregan in Ireland, have engaged in a deliberate, sustained, and concerted attack on the authority of civil courts and the rule of law.

Why has he done this? Because Mr. Burke was ordered to stay away from a school — Wilson’s Hospital School in County Westmeath — and has refused. He was told not to trespass there for three years. The court described his actions as a “fanatical campaign.” He was dismissed from the school for gross misconduct after refusing to follow the school’s direction that a transgender student be addressed appropriately.

“They/them.” That was the hill he chose to die on. He refused to address this student as “they/them.” He did not recognize being transgender as real. Subsequently, the school deemed that misconduct. He also acted out during school religious services and other events, voicing his objections to transgender identity in a disruptive and aggressive manner.

He would attend religious services or other school functions and loudly, obnoxiously object to transgender inclusion, deliberately misgendering students. He has been fined about 225,000 Irish pounds — roughly 198,000 British pounds — of which about 40,000 has been paid through automatic deductions from his teacher’s salary.

The justice stated that despite his time in prison and despite the fines, he continues to defy the court order. He’s the Donald Trump of Ireland. In August 2025, members of his family confronted the chair of the Education Authority, and the court did not take kindly to that either. He is a transphobe promoting his agenda, and the courts of Ireland are trying to stop him.

More importantly, they’re trying to keep him away from the school where he’s caused so much disruption. He refuses to stay away; he refuses to stop spreading anti-trans rhetoric. So, they’ve said, “Fine — have a good time back in jail.”

I wish we could jail all transphobes, by the way. I’d enjoy that. I watch a lot of Law & Order: SVU because I love Mariska Hargitay. One of the recurring themes on that show is that men can be raped.

This is something rarely discussed because there’s an even bigger stigma around male rape victims. People often say, “How can a man be raped if he gets aroused?” But that’s a biological response — you can be physically stimulated without consent or desire. It doesn’t mean you’re enjoying it. The body can respond involuntarily.

Men, of course, can also be raped in other ways and can experience sexual assault or unwanted advances. There’s a major stigma around that. In many cultures — including some African ones — if a man is raped and reports it, he is blamed for it, the same way women once were.

A gay lawmaker named Josh Newberry decided to challenge the stigma surrounding male rape victims. He went before the House of Commons on International Men’s Day and told his story. He wanted to break the silence around this issue. Bravo to him. I’m sure many members of the House of Commons were squirming in their seats, uncomfortable, but he did it.

He shared that he was raped ten years ago after having his drink spiked. He hoped that, by speaking out, he could raise awareness in the U.K. and globally. I’ll add that in West Hollywood two years ago, there was a big campaign after a string of similar assaults. At one club, The Abbey, gay men were waking up in alleys nearby with no memory of how they got there.

Authorities discovered they had been sexually assaulted. A sting operation eventually caught the perpetrators, who were spiking drinks and taking victims into nearby alleys. No one knows how many men were attacked, largely because many never report sexual assault — especially in other countries, where stigma and shame remain enormous barriers.

Nations like Russia, Chechnya, several across Africa, Ukraine, and others — this is why it was important for Josh Newberry to go into the House of Commons, put this on the record, and maybe help other victims who’ve been struggling with this. No matter their country, they might now feel encouraged to come forward and report that they were assaulted or raped — or both.

Good for him, truly. It happened on International Men’s Day, raised awareness, and ruffled quite a few feathers. Speaking of Ukraine — Moldova is right next to it. You’ve got Ukraine on one side, Romania on the other, and Moldova wedged right in the middle. There’s some hope there lately.

Moldova may be on the verge of advancing LGBTQ rights because a pro-EU Party of Action and Solidarity won in September’s parliamentary election. However, the LGBTQ community of Moldova is still waiting for that promised progress. They’re trying hard to get that EU-aligned party to follow through on its campaign pledges.

The capital city, Chișinău, is the largest city and home to a large queer community. But activists there say LGBTQ people outside the capital, especially in rural areas, face bullying and discrimination. They want protections for everyone, not just for those in the western and urban regions.

By the way, in a 2024 study by Moldova’s Equality Council, 80% of respondents said they did not want a queer person living in their neighborhood. That’s a steep uphill battle. The community really needs government help to overcome the stigma. Homosexuality was decriminalized in 1995 — thirty years ago — but society has been very slow to catch up.

Since September, activists have been hoping for tangible rights — legal recognition of gender identities, same-sex marriage — and they’re still pushing. They’re rallying the Party of Action and Solidarity to advance legislation during the new parliamentary session, which just opened and runs another year.

Jacobsen: Now, shifting to the Dominican Republic. The Constitutional Court there has issued a landmark ruling, striking down the ban criminalizing same-sex conduct within the country’s police department and armed forces.

Manuel Mechíaeo, director of the Human Rights Observatory for Vulnerable Groups, said, “No one should be discriminated against — not only within the ranks of the police and armed forces, but in general.”

On the other side, Feliziano Lassane, spokesperson for the country’s main evangelical organization, said, “What the country is experiencing in terms of morality, values, and principles is concerning. Allowing such depravity publicly and legally sets an unequivocal precedent that is not in line with what we have aspired to for the Dominican Republic.”

So, as expected, this ruling has sparked deep disagreement. This one seems like a bit of a softball. 

Bouley: I do wonder — are there really that many gay people in the forces? How many, exactly, are in the security services? But they do paint their faces and wear cute uniforms, so perhaps that’s part of the draw. Still, it’s great that the Constitutional Court struck down those provisions in the Code of Justice that criminalized consensual same-sex conduct by officers.

I’d be curious what percentage of officers identify as LGBTQIA+. But the larger issue is about the right to serve openly in government institutions — whether in the U.S. or Canadian military, the police, or, in this case, the Dominican Republic’s national police and armed forces.

We’ve made progress here in the United States. We’ve come a long way since “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Then Trump took office. We went right back to discharging trans service members and pushing queer people back into the closet.

In the Dominican Republic, religion still plays a major role — though not necessarily more than in the U.S. or elsewhere. Ireland, for example, is 80% Catholic and totally accepting; they’ve got gay Gardaí over there, trust me — I’ve been there. So this ruling is good news, because any pushback against bigotry is a good thing. It won’t be easy, though.

I imagine that if you’re an openly gay member of the national police or armed forces in the Dominican Republic, it’s still not going to be easier tomorrow, just because it’s now decriminalized. As we mentioned with Moldova, being gay has been legal there since 1995, yet 80% of the country still says they don’t want a queer neighbor. This ruling is progress — but full acceptance will take years.

It’ll take time for the national police and armed forces to integrate and truly accept LGBTQ people. In our own country, I remember watching Boots and thinking, “We’ve come so far.” Had I seen it before Trump retook office, I would’ve said, “Those were dark days, and we’ve grown past them.” But now, watching it in the era of Trump, it feels like we’re sliding right back.

The Dominican Republic’s progress fits into a broader trend. Peru, Ecuador, and Venezuela have also eliminated discriminatory laws that criminalized same-sex conduct by officers. Does that make things easier there? Not necessarily. Human Rights Watch found that discrimination and bigotry persist — but at least now, they can’t be arrested for it.

Remember, if you watch Boots on Netflix, there was a time when our own military jailed people for years simply for being gay and serving. Now they won’t be imprisoned, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be greeted with open arms.

Jacobsen: This has been a long story, and I’m sure you’re well aware of it. 

Bouley: Basically, Ghana has introduced an anti-LGBTQ+ bill that also penalizes allies — that’s the big new element. It reminds me of the Briggs Initiative in California when I was in high school. That was the one that got Anita Bryant a pie in the face.

I saw Harvey Milk debate the author of the Briggs Initiative when I was fifteen. It was in Long Beach, at Jordan High School. Later in life, I was inducted into the Harvey Milk Memorial Park for my contributions to the gay community, and it felt full circle — because when I was fifteen, I saw Harvey Milk and thought, “I could do that. I could be out. I could be gay.”

The Briggs Initiative said schools had to fire gay teachers, and other teachers were required to report them. If they didn’t, they’d be fired too. The bill in Ghana is disturbingly similar. Ghana has bigger issues to deal with, and gay rights were not at the top of their list. Some outside organization — maybe an American Christian group or Trump-aligned entity — likely pressured them into this.

The president has pledged to sign a bill that penalizes not only LGBTQ+ people but also their allies. That echoes exactly what the Briggs Initiative tried to do in the late 1970s here in the U.S. It’s dangerous — dangerous rhetoric and a dangerous law.

It’s going to create a humanitarian crisis in Ghana — not that one doesn’t already exist — but especially for gay and lesbian people and their allies. What does “ally” even mean here? If your family supports you, does that make them criminals too? If you’re gay and your family accepts you, are they now prosecutable for that? It’s absurdly broad.

The danger is that the law is trying to scare people into not accepting gays. It’s not just about outlawing homosexuality — it’s about outlawing tolerance. If you accept gay people, you’re an ally. If you open a business that’s welcoming to queer people, you’re an ally. The goal is to stop not only gay people, but anyone who might be kind or supportive toward them. That’s impossible to enforce.

Once this law is signed — and it will be — it’s likely to cause a major outflow of gay people from Ghana. If you’re gay in Ghana, the safest thing to do may be to leave. This law continues a long, ugly pattern that traces back to British colonial laws.

“Make Ghana Great Again,” apparently — meaning a return to the 1800s. The Christian Council of Ghana is pushing this under the banner of “family values,” but there’s no love in that kind of Christianity. It’s Christian hate. They want to codify marriage as only between a man and a woman, gender as fixed at birth, and “family” as the foundation of the nation — as if gay people don’t come from families or can’t create them.

If I were the leader of Ghana and I was truly worried about gay people, I’d tell straight people to stop having sex — because we’re not reproducing ourselves. Straight people make gay people, so maybe they should look to the source.

They claim this bill is consistent with Ghana’s “tradition of peace, tolerance, and hospitality.” It’s not. It’s a regression — a step back into colonial bigotry dressed up as morality.

This bill flies in the face of Ghana’s international human rights obligations. However, the president of Ghana clearly doesn’t care. Ghana, culturally, has historically been an accepting place — a society that celebrates diversity, inclusion, and community strength, much like Hawaiian culture does. That’s part of Ghana’s identity. But this Christian organization has come in and said, “We’ll have none of that.” 

Jacobsen: I should point out that I’ve interviewed Alex Kofi-Dankor at least twice over the past few years. He runs LGBT+ Rights Ghana, a major organization advocating for LGBTQ Ghanaians. He and others face regular harassment and the constant threat of violence for organizing openly.

Bouley: This bill is going to justify and amplify that harassment — giving people a legal excuse to persecute their fellow Ghanaians. Human Rights Watch has reported extensively on this. One of their findings was that the second Trump administration’s right-wing policies had direct international impacts — including in Ghana and across Africa.

Just four days after Trump was sworn in, his administration cut over 90% of USAID and State Department foreign assistance programs, including PEPFAR — the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief — which had provided testing and lifesaving treatment to millions across the Caribbean and Africa. As a result, clinics in cities like Accra have run out of medication and shut down.

Meanwhile, American conservative evangelical groups — the same ones I mentioned earlier — have spent years exporting their hatred abroad. Organizations like the American Center for Law and Justice and Family Watch International, both with ties to the first Trump administration, have been lobbying for anti-gay laws in Ghana, Uganda, and other African countries.

According to Bloomberg and the Institute for Journalism and Social Change, seventeen U.S. conservative groups spent $5.2 million in Africa in 2022 alone — a 47% increase from 2019 — to block LGBTQ rights. 

Jacobsen: And keep in mind, the currency conversion makes that money go much further. 

Bouley: Five million U.S. dollars in most African nations translates to enormous influence — you can buy a whole continent’s worth of bigotry for what would barely fund a congressional campaign in the U.S.

That’s why they do it. In the U.S., $5.2 million won’t buy much political traction. In Africa, it can finance anti-gay campaigns in thirty countries. These American evangelicals, who love to quote Scripture and claim moral superiority, have apparently forgotten their own book.

Christ himself never mentioned homosexuality. None of the Ten Commandments say, “Thou shalt not be gay.” It never came up in the Sermon on the Mount. There are no biblical roots for anti-gay sentiment. Even as an atheist, I’ve studied the text closely — and it says the opposite: “Judge not, lest ye be judged. Love thy neighbor as thyself.”

The Leviticus passages they love to quote have long been shown to be mistranslations. The Bible, as a source of anti-gay hatred, simply isn’t one.

It’s the opposite, really. The Bible says to love everybody. It says not to judge anybody. It says that if someone offends you, you should turn the other cheek. The Bible’s core principles are about diversity, equity, and inclusion — Christians just keep getting that part wrong.

Jacobsen: Do we have any more stories for today?

Bouley: No, that’s about it — aside from Dick Cheney’s funeral, which was quite a hoot. He was anti-gay, then pro-gay after a relative came out. He opposed gay marriage until suddenly he didn’t. 

Jacobsen: Growth? 

Bouley: I call it bullshit. Dick Cheney — if Satan has a dais in hell, the people to his right and left, one of them’s going to be Dick Cheney. The man was a horrible human being — shot his friend in the face, launched two illegal wars because Bush wasn’t smart enough to do it himself, and spent a decade in contempt of Congress refusing to testify about Iraq and Afghanistan.

He was a horrible man. Yes, I know it’s not polite to speak ill of the dead, but don’t worry — I said the same things while he was alive. His record on gay rights was awful, absolutely awful — until his daughter, Mary Cheney, came out as a lesbian. Suddenly, that changed everything. But it does show that even the most staunch conservative can change their stance when it’s someone they love.

This Gay Week with Scott and me. Thank you all for joining us on this whirlwind cavalcade. Don’t worry — the world will keep spinning, and it’s going to remain a very gay place. So there’ll be more stories next week.

Jacobsen: It’s the gayest place on earth where we are.

Bouley: Even that asteroid headed toward us is gay. It keeps changing its tail. It’s a pretty gay asteroid. 

Jacobsen: Make up your mind where you’re going to land! 

Bouley: Are you going to have a tail, or not? Are you glowing green, or are you glowing purple? 

Jacobsen: For the love of God — fine, have socks of different colors. Let’s go!

Bouley: I don’t even sort my socks. My niece once told me, “When you’re old, think of all the time you’ll save if you never sort your socks.” She was right. I just throw them all in the drawer and wear whatever I want. See you next week. Au revoir.

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