The Council of Europe Endorses LGBT Demands and Gender Ideology in Guide for Local Governments

Are they going to train public administration workers?

The Council of Europe, as part of the Intercultural Cities Programme, has published a new training manual on “inclusion” at the local level for people who identify as LGBT. The document titled “+LGBTI+ Intercultural Competences Training Manual was developed as a result of the “Rainbow Connections” project, implemented in partnership with the cities of Oeiras (Portugal) and Leeds (United Kingdom). The handbook is intended primarily for local governments, public administration workers, and public institutions, and its main goal is to provide practical training tools that support the inclusion of people from the LGBTI community in public services. It includes two training modules—lesson plans designed for working with officials and employees of public institutions.

The authors of the handbook assume that, although many countries already have formal legal frameworks whose stated purpose is to protect people who identify as “LGBT,” their actual experiences in interactions with public authorities are still often hindered by barriers. Therefore, the problem is said to be not so much a lack of regulation as the insufficient competence of institutions and entrenched patterns of operation. In this context, they point, among other things, to cultural beliefs, institutional patterns, historical inequalities, and professional practices that, in their view, may perpetuate exclusion. In doing so, they refer to earlier documents prepared and published under the auspices of the Council of Europe, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, as well as ILGA Europe, an organization advocating the demands of the LGBT movement.

It is precisely “intercultural competences,” defined as the ability to understand and respect others despite all kinds of cultural barriers and as the set of knowledge and skills necessary for individuals and organizations to operate in an intercultural manner, that are intended to be a key element enabling the “inclusion” of so-called LGBT people at the local level.

What does the Council of Europe propose?

The structure of the guide is tailored to its practical nature. It is not a traditional report or an academic paper, but rather a set of ready-to-use training tools.

The document under review proposes two core training modules:

1. A 3-hour model from Leeds.
2. A 12-hour model from Oeiras.

The first—the Leeds model—is foundational and can serve as a starting point for further activities, while the second—the Oeiras model—is a fully fledged training program that can be implemented as part of institutional staff capacity building.

The tools proposed therein are also an important element of the publication, intended to serve the “social inclusion” of people who identify with the acronym LGBT. The authors propose methods for identifying so-called institutional biases, that is, operational mechanisms that—even unintentionally—may lead to the exclusion of certain groups. This includes, among other things, the language used in documents and communication, procedures for serving residents, and the way public services are designed. From this perspective, inclusion is not limited to declarations but becomes a matter of everyday administrative practices.

As an example, one may cite the proposed exercise, which involves analyzing words referring to so-called LGBTI people (p. 25). The participants’ task is to identify which ones have a positive, neutral, or negative connotation, which is intended to encourage reflection on the vocabulary used to refer to members of this community. “The discussion about the term “heterosexual” and its association with “normal” helps to reveal the implicit hierarchy that sustains the very use of insults. Working with these words in a safe environment allows the group to understand that insults are not limited to immediate impact: they shape identities, relationships, and opportunities for social participation.”

Among the other exercises, it is suggested, for example, that training participants discuss the differences between gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, and sex characteristics, as well as transgender issues, which, as the authors of the handbook indicate, is intended to help them understand “the diversity of human experiences” (p. 27).

Another of the exercises proposed in the report involves recognizing the flags of various movements associated with the broader LGBT movement (p. 40). As the authors of the document point out, the “team-building exercise” in question is intended to encourage participants to talk and to create a relaxed and cohesive atmosphere. “The activity is intended to be fun and engaging, but also educational, as it frequently introduces new aspects of the LGBTI+ community and the terms used to describe it,” the report says.

Further in the document, there are many other exercises aimed, among other things, at understanding and internalizing the terminology used in the LGBT movement, which includes terms such as “gender identity”, “pronouns”, and “discrimination”. Other training courses address, for example, understanding the situation of transgender and non-binary people in the workplace.

Ideological foundations of the guide

The manual explicitly relies on the concepts of gender theory and activist documents that do not constitute binding international law. The term “gender” is defined as socially constructed roles and expectations, and the gender binary as a “socially constructed concept, that asserts that there are only two genders, male and female, as unique and mutually exclusive.” Gender identity is treated as an “internal sense of feeling” detached from the biological reality of chromosomes and anatomy.

The glossary includes terms such as:

• heteronormativity / cisnormativity (as structural causes of exclusion),
• transphobia, interphobia, biphobia (criticism of gender ideology is automatically labeled as “phobia”).

Negative consequences of ideological assumptions at the local government level

The guide prepared under the aegis of the Council of Europe is yet another example of ideologically charged measures that attribute the alleged discrimination against “LGBTI people” to “heteronormativity” or “heterosexism”. The document is based on a specific set of assumptions regarding the role of public institutions, the nature of “diversity,” and the ways of regulating it. It is also significant that materials originating from entities engaged in activities to advance the goals of the LGBT movement were used in its preparation. It may seem that the line between ensuring equal treatment and actively promoting a particular vision of social life is sometimes blurred here.

Importantly, the assumptions adopted by the authors of the guide, if implemented at the local government level, may entail a number of negative consequences. First and foremost, the possibility should be mentioned of local government officials being engaged on a particular side of an ideological dispute. Supporting measures aimed at combating ideologically construed “discrimination against LGBTI+ people” or “transphobia” could, in fact, lead to a gradual change in the nature of public institutions. In such a case, local government administration, instead of focusing solely on procedural equality and the efficient delivery of services, would assume the role of an active participant in promoting specific norms and interpretations of social reality.

“From the perspective of the potential negative consequences of using the Council of Europe’s guide at the local government level, it is also important to consider possible intrusions into the personal beliefs of officials and public administration workers as well as other individuals expected to take part in such training. Freedom of conscience and religion, understood as the right to hold and retain one’s own beliefs, is a well-established human right. This also includes the freedom to express one’s religious beliefs. This standard is affirmed, for example, in the European Convention on Human Rights, whose Article 9 protects freedom of thought, conscience, and religion, including the sphere of inner beliefs, which is regarded as enjoying particularly strong protection against interference by public authorities. Meanwhile, conducting training sessions based on ideological handbooks may infringe upon the above-mentioned rights of employees of local governments and other public institutions,” notes Patryk Ignaszczak, an analyst at the Ordo Iuris Center for International Law.