Victor Madrigal-Borloz may be the most consequential bureaucrat you’ve never heard of.
Madrigal-Borloz is the “SOGI czar” at the United Nations. Or, more precisely, he is the U.N.’s so-called independent expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, or SOGI.
And the Costa Rican lawyer just concluded an official visit to the United States intended to “assess” the “human rights of LGBT persons” here.
In a press conference Tuesday at U.N. headquarters, Madrigal-Borloz shared his initial reactions. He discussed the public health impact of monkeypox, which mostly afflicts gay men. He bemoaned the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade and its “devastating” impact on lesbians and “people with gestational faculties.” And he derided efforts in various American states to limit “gender-affirming care.”
Madrigal-Borloz will present an official report of his findings and recommendations to the U.N. Human Rights Council next June. We don’t have to sit in suspense until next year for his recommendations, though. We can hazard a pretty good guess about what his report will say, based upon what he has said in the past.
Madrigal-Borloz’s other most recent country visit was to Tunisia last year. His advice to that Arab country included radical proposals that go well beyond preventing violence.
There, he voiced concern over “the inability of trans people to access hormonal treatments and gender-affirming operations.” Such interventions, he claimed, are “essential treatments for their survival.”
The U.N.’s independent expert also reported that “LGBT sex workers face multiple and aggravated forms of discrimination,” and noted that they must endure “double criminalization for homosexuality, morality, or indecent assault.”
But Madrigal-Borloz’s assertions aside, providing chemical and surgical gender transitions for “trans” individuals or removing social stigma and legal penalties for sex workers—the euphemism for prostitutes—is not what most people have in mind when they think about eliminating violence or discrimination.
In fact, “gender-affirming care” arguably is violence against children, who lack the maturity to give real consent to drugs and surgeries that leave them infertile, disfigured, and often full of regret. But advocates of these methods, including many within the Biden White House, insist the opposite is true.
Despite strong evidence to the contrary, these gender ideology devotees have convinced doctors and parents alike that for children suffering from gender dysphoria—or even just those who might challenge gender stereotypes—gender-affirming care is “lifesaving.”
Increasingly, though, countries in Western Europe are backtracking on this approach. The U.K., Finland, and Sweden all are reevaluating how they treat children with gender dysphoria.
The tone and topics of Madrigal-Borloz’s earlier reports are also telling.
Last year, he submitted two reports to the U.N. General Assembly as well as to the Human Rights Council. His reports were on “the law of inclusion” and “practices of exclusion,” and they solidified the SOGI czar’s reputation as a committed evangelist of radical gender theory.
Madrigal-Borloz even recommended using hate speech laws to go after those who oppose awarding new rights on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. This could easily cover religious believers of many traditions.
The SOGI czar’s prior report to the Human Rights Council, in 2020, is a scathing attack on what he referred to as “conversion therapy,” which conjured up images of torture. The report uses that label to describe psychologists and therapists, and even clerical counselors, who merely seek to help people cope with unwanted same-sex attraction. It also includes those who seek to help those who suffer from gender dysphoria to reconcile with their own bodies.
Madrigal-Borloz advocates banning “conversion therapy” across the board. The effect would be to censor any therapists or religious believers who won’t recite the gender ideology catechism.
We should expect the same from Madrigal-Borloz’s visit to the United States. It included meetings with dozens of leftist lawmakers and advocacy groups, including the Human Rights Campaign and the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Like Madrigal-Borloz, those who promote policies or rights based on membership in select identity groups rely on pejorative terms such as “intolerance” and “discrimination” in pursuit of their radical goals.
In his remarks this week at the U.N., Madrigal-Borloz proclaimed that “equality is not yet within reach … or within sight for LGBT communities in the United States.”
Surely his final report next June will conclude as much. But the reality is not so dire. Americans of all stripes have equal claim to their constitutional and God-given rights. Where injustice or violence occurs, the law is supposed to be blind to the race, sex, and orientation of victims and perpetrators.
But the same can’t be said for the U.N.’s SOGI czar.
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