Biden tosses LGBTQ+ under the bus to impress a right-winger

Biden tosses LGBTQ+ under the bus to impress a right-winger

By: Rachel Marsden

PARIS — Do I need some new glasses? Was that really Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni at the White House last week in a tête-à-tête with President Joe Biden? The same Giorgia Meloni who told French TV when she was 19 years old that “Mussolini was a good politician, in that everything he did, he did for Italy” while other women her age were swooning over Leonardo DiCaprio?

Are we talking about the same world leader described by Foreign Policy magazine as “Italy’s first prime minister with a past in a neo-fascist organization”? What exactly does Biden see in her?

Last September, Biden evoked Chinese President Xi Jinping’s position that democracies can’t be sustained, and brought up, in passing, “what’s happened in Italy,” in reference to Meloni’s popularity.

The President’s association of her with a threat to democracy was crystal clear. But now he’s rolling out the red carpet for her — and leaving it unrolled. “I was delighted to welcome the prime minister,” Biden said last week. “We’ve become friends and it’s good to have you back in the White House. Thank you for coming.”

Likewise, prior to Meloni’s election, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in her “State of the European Union” speech, mimicking the address of an actual elected leader, spoke without a hint of irony of the need to defend democracies from autocrats. The entire establishment was having a hissy fit over the Italian people choosing a government and leader that lacked its seal of approval. They expressed particular concern over her position on LGBTQ+ rights and same-sex unions. Surely this critical constituency of Biden’s Democrats could count on him, at the very least, to virtue signal on their behalf when he’s face to face with an Italian right-winger — particularly in light of the concrete steps that Meloni’s government has already taken this year to limit parental rights of same-sex couples to the biological parent only.

When Meloni came out of the closet as a proud supporter of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and of Ukraine, European ice queen Ursula suddenly melted into Meloni’s hands. Biden has apparently followed suit. Last week, Biden underscored that “Italy and the United States are also standing strong with Ukraine, and I compliment you on your very strong support defending against Russian atrocities, and that’s what they are.”

Is the support of a fellow NATO ally for Washington’s agenda in Ukraine, as the conflict serves to launder Western taxpayer cash into the pockets of the military-industrial complex, sufficient for Biden to toss all of his Two-Spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, and intersex supporters under the bus? Apparently so. And Meloni still has something else that he wants.

The Italian prime minister has been playing the Biden administration like an expert seductress by setting up a love triangle with the US and China.

Meloni has been signaling to Washington that Italy is open to being courted because it’s considering a potential breakup with China in ditching its participation in Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative as the only major Western country to have joined the project. It’s been all over the Western press lately that she’s weighing more balanced ties with Beijing, and has told Biden as much.

As Washington has been pressuring its European allies to de-risk from China, Meloni has called Italy’s involvement a “big mistake.”

She’s said that it’s not necessary to be contractually wedded to China, and they could instead opt for an open relationship — economically speaking.

By musing aloud about it all, Meloni has gone from being a big threat to democracy to being its most eligible bachelorette. Presumably, if Washington wants to seal the deal and get Italy away from China, it’s not going to come cheap. The price? Well, to start, Washington is now apparently biting its tongue on the LGBTQ rights issue. Meloni said this week that no one — from Biden to the congressional members she met with — brought it up in meetings with her.

Did Washington’s woke Western allies get the memo that minority rights are now sotto voce when it comes to dealing with Italy? Because just a couple of months ago at the G7 summit in Japan, it was pretty obvious that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hadn’t. “Obviously, Canada is concerned about some of the (positions) that Italy is taking in terms of LGBT rights,” Trudeau said, to a reportedly “visibly annoyed” Meloni.

At least some of these different groups to which Biden and the Democrats shamelessly pander when their votes are needed can now see exactly where they sit on the hierarchy of priorities — in other words, way down the list and far below strategic economic interests and the optics of aligning with the European “far-right”. The only difference between Democrats and Republicans is that at least the GOP is more honest about their pragmatism up front rather than playing them for useful fools.