Back when Ronald Reagan was president, conservatives relished
skewering liberals who, in approaching international affairs,
“always blame America first.” A generation later, with Barack Obama
in the White House, they are proving they can indict the U.S.A.
with the best of them.

Earlier this month, the administration announced a new effort to
“end discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender
(LGBT) persons” around the world. President Obama issued an
executive memo outlining the campaign, and Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton made a speech on International Human Rights Day
arguing that “gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay
rights.”

This didn’t get much attention, if only because the commitment
is mostly rhetorical. It doesn’t mean the United States will invade
a country that denies equal treatment to gays, or impose economic
sanctions, or cut off aid, or refuse to work together on other
matters.

It just means our diplomats will occasionally raise the issue,
deliver a lecture once in a while and note such abuses in the State
Department’s annual report on human rights in the world. Not a big
deal, really.

Except, that is, to religious conservatives who regard any
charitable words about gays as the death knell of Western
civilization.

Rick Perry said the decision proved Obama is “out of touch with
America’s values.” Rick Santorum said Obama was promoting “gay
lifestyles.” The conservative Liberty Counsel Action said Obama was
exporting our “immorality to other nations that are trying to
adhere to traditional principles relative to human sexuality.”

As it happens, they’re mistaken. Gay rights are
America’s values, according to America’s people.

More Americans now support legalizing same-sex marriage than
oppose it. A poll this year found that 73 percent favor a ban on
job discrimination against gays. A similar majority supports
letting gays serve openly in the military.

But the administration is not demanding that other countries
legalize gay marriage, induct gay soldiers or give out awards for
the most outrageous float in the Gay Pride parade. The chief goals
are less ambitious: ending violence against people because of their
sexual orientation and repealing laws that make homosexuality a
crime.

It may be hard to believe, but some 76 countries outlaw gay
sexual relations. At least five — Iran, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia,
Sudan and Yemen — make it punishable by death. In September, an
Iranian human rights group reported that three men had been hanged
for homosexual sodomy.

In many places, abuse is the norm. Gays across Africa “have been
denied access to health care, detained, tortured and even killed,”
reports The Washington Post. The Gambian president promised to “cut
off the head” of any homosexual. These nations, we are told, are
just trying to uphold traditional morality.

It’s one thing to say, as most Republicans do, that gays and
lesbians should not be entitled to marry or enjoy protection
against private discrimination. It’s another to say they deserve to
be harassed, imprisoned or executed for being gay.

But some conservatives say it’s wrong for the U.S. government to
protest such policies. They seem to think governments have a moral
obligation to make homosexuality as miserable as possible.

This is a minority view. There was no groundswell of public
anger in 2003, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down ruled laws
against gay sodomy. Nor has the GOP pushed a constitutional
amendment to overturn that decision.

Americans may disagree on gay marriage. But they really don’t
favor locking gays up — or harshly mistreating them — over
private, consensual sex.