The Trump administration had shut down the USAID website as it continues its investigation into its projects globally, while some organisations have seemingly disconnected the link to content relating to USAID funding on their websites.
The USAID funding of LGBTQ advocacy projects has extended to the funding of advertisements for buses, including a “tek pride inna Jamaica” advertisement that was carried for at least one year on the state-owned Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC) bus. The bus company confirmed to the Freedom Come Rain newspaper that USAID was indeed the funder. Pride is a term used in reference to LGBTQ-related activities internationally. The same design used for the advertisement was also painted on a wall in downtown Kingston that was sponsored by Equality Jamaica Foundation.
In shutting down USAID, Trump said the organisation was being run by “radical lunatics.” USAID, an independent agency established by an act of Congress, manages a budget of $42.8 billion meant for humanitarian relief and development assistance around the world.
Advocacy officer at the Jamaica Coalition for a Healthy Society (JCHS), Philippa Davies, said that while USAID has been associated with positive programmes that have benefitted developing countries, the organisation has also been associated with programmes that have nefarious agendas.
“Another point of advocacy by the USAID has been its push for countries around the world to accept so-called political rights for persons who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender.
I say ‘so-called rights’ because those persons already enjoy the same human rights that we all do, but what they are seeking are entitlements or privileges that would be over the existing human rights and have the effect of suppressing the rights that we currently enjoy, such as freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, religious liberty [and] parental rights, among others,” Davies said.
