Q Toon: Brunei Blind

Within two months after Trump's U.N. Ambassador Ric Grenell told a German magazine that the U.S. was calling upon all U.N. members to decriminalize homosexuality — a policy nobody else in the Corrupt Trump Administration seems to have heard of beforehand — the southeast Asian sultanate of Brunei announced that gays in their country should be sentenced to death by stoning.

The response from the U.S. State Department was tepid at best.

Global outrage has greeted news of the introduction of the new law under the Syariah Penal Code (SPC). On Friday, the British government and European Union called on Brunei to abandon the law, while George Clooney called for a boycott of hotels owned by the Sultan of Brunei in a column for Deadline.
After nearly 24 hours of declining to clarify its position, the State Department finally sent The Daily Beast a statement saying the U.S. was “concerned” about the new law, minutes after we published a story noting Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the department's silence.
However, when asked by The Daily Beast, Pompeo and the Department of State declined to directly condemn, or state an objection to, the stoning to death of LGBT people.
The full statement reads: “The United States is concerned with Brunei’s decision to implement Phases Two and Three of the Sharia Penal Code. Some of the punishments in the law appear inconsistent with international human rights obligations, including with respect to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
“We have encouraged Brunei to ratify and implement the United Nations Convention Against Torture, which it signed in 2015, and to sign, ratify, and implement the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.”

At this point, the LGBTQ community's expectations of the Corrupt Trump Administration are pretty low — Ambassador Grenell's ephemeral trial balloon notwithstanding. My cartoon's premise that the Secretary of State took the time to speak with Mr. Trump about the news out of Brunei is giving both of them the benefit of considerable doubt.

At least we can be assured that Trump will take part in Mr. Clooney's boycott of Brunei-owned hotels.

This president has a policy of steering any government travel business only toward Trump-owned hotels.