Why is so much money given to LGBTQIA+ Activism if it is “Natural”?
For decades, gay, lesbian and bisexual people in Sri Lanka lived private lives without demanding social restructuring, repealing of existing laws, special quotas, “dysphoria” treatment, “identity” labels or pronoun usage or even telling about their lifestyle to school children. Yet, after 2015, a sudden escalation in political activism came with the appending of LGB with TQIA along with 80+ genders and promoted via, public campaigns, programs targeting children and youth, media indoctrination and corporate policies began to be rolled out in Sri Lanka. This expansion was not organic. It was funded, coordinated and politically engineered and externally pushed.
If LGBTQIA+ identity were a natural, private lifestyle issue, why has it become a multi-billion-dollar global political project? Why has a sudden surge in youth desiring sex change surgeries increased from non-existent numbers prior to 1990s?
Why do foreign governments, billionaires, embassies, UN agencies, and corporate foundations pump money into LGBTQIA+ activism in other countries—especially developing nations like Sri Lanka?
The answer is clear: LGBTQIA+ is no longer about personal rights. It has been converted into a geopolitical tool—a mechanism to expand Western influence, pressure governments, control policy, penetrate education and legal systems, reshape and destroy national cultures from within.
Dismantling a nation from multiple pillars.
Biden Administration Confirms LGBTQIA+ as a U.S. Foreign Policy Weapon
This is not speculation—it has been openly declared.
In February 2021, U.S. President Joe Biden issued a Presidential Memorandum instructing all U.S. federal agencies to use foreign aid, diplomacy, economic pressure and sanctions to promote LGBTQIA+ ideology overseas.
The document states:
“Protecting the human rights of LGBTQI+ persons is a foreign policy priority of the United States.”
(White House Memorandum, 4 February 2021)
This was followed by funding directly pushed through:
- USAID
- National Endowment for Democracy (NED)
- International Republican Institute (IRI)
- National Democratic Institute (NDI)
- Open Society Foundations (George Soros)
- Human Rights Campaign (HRC)
- Freedom House
- Arcus Foundation
- Ford Foundation
- UNDP, UNESCO, UNICEF
- European Union
- British and Canadian embassies
These entities now use LGBTQIA+ activism as a soft power mechanism to infiltrate laws, influence elections, shape public morality, weaken national identity, and promote social engineering disguised as “human rights.”
The Business of LGBTQIA+: Billionaires and NGOs behind it
In line with the US executive order a growing number of billionaires began using LGBTQIA+ funding to force ideological compliance worldwide.
| Funder | Strategy | Political Purpose |
| George Soros – Open Society Foundation | Funding activists and legal reform | Influence local law and governance |
| Tim Gill – Gill Foundation | Funding litigation and DEI programs | Normalize gender ideology |
| Arcus Foundation | Funds NGOs in Asia and Africa | Promote transgender ideology |
| Ford Foundation | Strategic legal reform campaigns | Left-wing political influence |
| Human Rights Watch & Amnesty | Lobby governments through reports | Policy pressure & media narrative |
| USAID / EU / UK Aid | Fund NGOs, school programs, judiciary training | Institutional capture |
Major Local Players and their Foreign backing
A close look at Sri Lanka’s principal LGBTQIA institutions reveals that almost all of them openly list foreign or corporate sponsors on their websites and public materials.
- Equal Ground, the oldest Sri Lankan LGBTQIA advocacy group, regularly partners with corporate firms (John Keells, Sapphirus Lanka) for DEI and sensitivity programs. Their website also states collaborations with the Sri Lanka Press Institute and media houses for “sensitisation” workshops. Currently involved in controversy with SLTDA “LGBTQIA Tourism”.
- The Bridge to Equalityproject—run by local LGBTQIA and legal advocacy groups—explicitly names the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) as a supporting body.
- Èquité, cited by donor NGOs like KIOS, is presented in donor narratives as a key national LGBTI community builder in Sri Lanka, backed by international civil society networks.
- iProbono, known for legal and equality advocacy, releases social media content that frames its expansion in LGBT+ work as part of a regional donor-driven plan.
- Companions on a Journey (CoJ), one of Sri Lanka’s earliest LGBT support groups, had historic funding from the Dutch governmentand Alliance London (HIV/AIDS funding group).
- Women Support Group dedicated to lesbian, bisexual transgender women is an offshoot of Companions on a Journey.
- Women and Media Collective (WMC) – Ford Foundation listed as a grant recipient
- INFORM (Sexuality research / activism) Ford Foundation gives grants for DEI research
- Centre for Equality & Justice (CEJ) – supported by Canadian High Commission
- Venasa Transgender Network (Venasa) / National Transgender Network – receives support from Human Dignity Trust
These disclosures are important: they confirm that Sri Lankan “local activism” is often explicitly financed or endorsed by external actors. This undermines claims of being purely organic local movements.
This is not charity. This is ideological warfare funded as foreign investment.
Why Fund Sri Lanka?
The timeline is revealing. Foreign LGBTQIA+ funding into Sri Lanka sharply escalated only after 2015—the year regime change was engineered with heavy U.S. and Western involvement. Between 2004–2014, funding for LGBTQIA activism in Sri Lanka was extremely limited, almost symbolic. After 2015, however, large-scale funding was mobilized through USAID, EU, UNDP, UK Aid, and Canadian grants. This was not social demand—it was foreign supply pushing an ideology.
After 2015, Sri Lanka saw an explosion of foreign-funded “civil society” registered NGOs.
These groups began aggressively campaigning for:
- Repeal of Penal Code Sections 365 and 365A
- Introduction of “gender identity” and “sexual orientation” into law
- Targeted psychological programs for youth (especially in schools and universities)
- LGBTQIA+ media normalization – funding media owners, journalists to promote it across media channels and engaged youtubers and social media networks
- Handpicked medical professionals ready to use their professional name to peddling LGBTQIA propaganda of “gender dysphoria” & ensured they were given media podium to get the message across to the public.
- Corporate DEI policies to infiltrate private sector & influence its 8.4m workforce.
- Anti-national lobbying under “human rights” branding
- Pressure against Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity/Catholicism, & Islam and Sri Lankan cultural norms
- Handful of religious heads were also drawn to handle the religious aspect and twist religious texts to present a new notion that LGBTQIA should be welcomed.
Multiple channels – multitude of people were hired to spread the message over years.
Thus, this sudden culture invasion was not natural – it was funded, well-orchestrated and lobbied.
All the locals who have become partners to it have either embraced a new lifestyle for their personal upliftment or were hired for the role.
Confirmed Foreign Funding Streams to Sri Lanka (Post 2015)
| Funding Source | Channel | Purpose |
| USAID | Through NGOs like IHR, EQUAL GROUND, CPA | LGBTQIA legal reform & advocacy |
| National Endowment for Democracy (NED) | Grants to Sri Lanka NGOs | Activism and media narrative |
| Open Society Foundation | Civil society networks | Lobbying and legal activism |
| European Union | Grants to NGOs | LGBTQIA+ and “anti-discrimination” legislation |
| Canadian Fund for Local Initiatives (CFLI) | Grants via local NGOs | School-based LGBTQIA projects |
| British High Commission | Workshop funding | Law reform & media influence |
| UNDP & OHCHR | Legal advisory & policy reform | Push SOGI language into law |
| Netherland High Commission | Training Sri Lanka Police | Despite 0.0023% LGBTQIA in Sri Lanka the police are being trained |
| UNDP / OHCHR / Canadian Fund for Human Rights | Local legal teams working with NGOs | Strategic litigation to remove Sections 365/365A & insert SOGI law reform |
Foreign-funded Lawyers and Activists Driving Legal Reform
Alongside NGOs, a small group of lawyers in Sri Lanka has been strategically funded and groomed to act as legal pressure points for LGBTQIA legislative change. These actors operate as legal change agents for foreign agendas—using court petitions, UN submissions, and policy advocacy to force ideological reforms without public mandate or Parliamentary approval.
When examining the true scale of the LGBTQIA community in Sri Lanka, the numbers tell a very different story than the one amplified by media, political speeches, and advocacy campaigns.
Reality Check: The Actual LGBTQIA in Numbers
While media, politicians, and advocacy campaigns make it appear that LGBTQIA individuals are a large, growing community, the actual figures are far smaller. Equal Ground’s own 2021 survey reported only 193 individuals in the workforce and 45 employers actively involved. This calculated against 8.4m workforces is just 0.0023%.
Extrapolating to the entire population of 22 million, even if we generously take 0.03% as the true figure, this represents only about 6,600 LGBTQIA people—The perception of a mass movement is therefore manufactured, amplified by foreign-funded campaigns, media coverage, and corporate policies, rather than reflecting reality.
How much money has actually come in?
Based on publicly available donor records, embassy grant announcements, NGO disclosures, and UN project budgets, it is conservatively estimated that between USD 27 million and USD 36 million has been injected into Sri Lanka between 2015–2025 specifically for LGBTQIA+, SOGI, DEI, and “inclusive governance” programs. This excludes undisclosed funding routed through fellowship payments, offshore accounts, and informal activist networks. If hidden foreign financing and “consultancy payments” are added, the total may exceed USD 40–50 million.
No nations spend this kind of money on another country unless it seeks political returns.
Why So Much Money? The Real Agenda
Sri Lanka has been specifically targeted not because of “human rights concerns,” but because of its geopolitical importance in the Indian Ocean. The LGBTQIA+ movement is being used as a low-cost regime influence tool under the Indo-Pacific Strategy. USAID, NED, and European-funded NGOs now operate as pressure agents inside Sri Lanka to influence constitutional reform, judicial activism, anti-national propaganda, and military weakening. LGBTQIA+ activism is simply one of many tools used to interfere in domestic policy under a fake human rights label.
The LGBTQIA+ movement is now a Trojan horse used to:
- Control legislation– force new legal definitions of gender & sexuality & remove penal code protections
- Colonize education– teach children “gender fluidity” and sexualize minors
- Weaken national identity– attack cultural and religious morality the bedrock of a stable society
- Install DEI corporate control– psychological coercion in workplaces for job survival
- Silence dissent– label opposition as “hate speech”
- Enable foreign NGOs to control over elected representatives– bypass democratic sovereignty
- Destabilize societiesand family – increase identity conflict – isolate individual away from family
- Create dependency psychology– replace national values with Western liberalism
- Individuals hooked on medications for life, walking artificial human beings – externally looking the opposite sex via medications
- Annihilate religion & its bond with people – steer people away from faith and religious virtues that are passed down from generation to generation.
- Depopulation agenda materialized – breakdown the institution of marriage, discourage marriage, bearing children – decline in national population growth
If LGBTQIA movement was natural, why so much propaganda?
A natural phenomenon grows by itself. It doesn’t need millions of dollars in embassy funding, UN lobbying, paid activists, media censorship, or corporate coercion.
You don’t see global campaigns for left-handed people or people with different eye colours. Only ideologies need marketing and funding.
Truth doesn’t need funding.
Agendas do.
Sri Lanka must Ask: Who Pays these NGOs? Who writes their Scripts?
Almost every “LGBTQIA rights activist” in Sri Lanka today is foreign funded.
When foreign embassies and billionaire-funded NGOs write our laws, we lose national sovereignty.
This is not a human rights struggle—it is foreign political interference disguised as “equality.”
When media promotes only LGBTQIA events or scripts and do not use their media to warn citizens, protect children and religious values – without a doubt they enjoy foreign funding.
The list of key corporates who have adopted LGBTQIA-DEI as HR policy
- Commercial Bank – won Special Jury Award” at DEI Champions Awards 2025
- DFCC Bank – has a “Gender Diversity & Inclusion policy page on website
- HNB Assurance – partners with LGBTQIA NGO “Diversity Collective”
- NDB – uses EDGE Gender Certification
- People’s Bank – launched D&I recognition
- IFC – runs DEI training
- Brandix – partners with UNFPA for gender initiatives
- Dialog Axiata – awarded DEI leadership
- MAS Holdings – linked to SOGIESC training with “Grassrooted Trust” and EQUITE
- JKH – launched ONE JKH DEI brand, used rainbow symbolism, runs LGBTQIA awareness campaigns, sponsored PRIDE, trains staff in pronoun usage
- Nestle – DEI inclusive policies, LGBTQIA awareness
- Sysco Labs – has DEI policy page
- Rainbow Private Limited – honored at DEI Champions Awards 2025
- SAGT – won DEI Champions Award Special Jury award
- Uber Sri Lanka – partners with UNDP on gender / SGBV awareness
- Heineken – aligns to global inclusion & diversity
- IFS – ran campaign fearing LGBTQIA icons with Pride themes
- Unilever Sri Lanka – has global DEI / equity/inclusion policies referring to LGBTQIA
Role of Media in LGBTQIA promotion
Despite claiming to be “independent,” a small circle of privately owned media groups in Sri Lanka have aggressively promoted LGBTQIA ideology far beyond its social relevance. Outlets such as Daily Mirror, Sunday Times and HI!! Magazine (Wijeya Group) and Ada Derana/TV Derana (Power House Ltd., linked to MP Dilith Jayaweera) routinely feature Pride events, Western-funded NGO campaigns and UN talking points that normalize LGBTQIA ideology. Lifestyle channels like Pulse, Raw Sri Lanka, Roar Media, Chokalaate, Bakery.lk and HI!! Online target youth through emotional storytelling and social engineering to change cultural attitudes. These are all tapped to engage youth in psychological conditioning by glamorizing LGBTQIA content and repositioning it as a “modern lifestyle culture”. The increase in women taking alcohol and smoking as a fashion is part of plan. Usage of drugs & substance abuse is aligned to LGBTQIA lifestyles.
Even state-owned media has begun quietly joining this agenda—Rupavahini, ITN and Channel Eye have broadcast teledramas and films featuring LGBTQIA themes and characters, subtly normalizing and mainstreaming gender ideology under the guise of “social awareness.” This coordinated media amplification—both private and state—has enabled foreign-funded activism to dominate public opinion, bypassing cultural values and democratic consent. It raises a critical ethical question: Who pays for this content and why is media being used as a weapon to re-engineer Sri Lankan society?
We can recall how US envoy personally championed LGBTQIA media promotion. She has hoisted pride flag at the embassy which is now banned. She regularly hosts LGBTQIA activists at the embassy and even called for legal reforms.
Even media training initiatives such as MoJo (Mobile Journalism) Lanka, launched with U.S. Embassy support under Julie Chung, have been used to promote LGBTQIA narratives. Workshops and content modules encourage journalists to produce stories highlighting ‘gender diversity’ and LGBTQIA issues, showing how foreign-funded media programs serve as channels to normalize this ideology in Sri Lanka.
Key Questions to ask
- Who pays Sri Lankan NGOs promoting LGBTQIA+?
- Why are foreign embassies funding our legal reforms?
- Why is USAID and similar entities funding LGBTQIA workshops targeting students?
- Why is gender ideology forced into workplaces through DEI?
- Why are UN agencies interfering in our cultural values?
- Who are Sri Lanka’s politicians or political parties promoting it or have been paid to be silent about it.
- Which Sri Lankan lawyers are being funded through foreign training, fellowships, and consultancy payments to file LGBTQIA-related cases in courts?
- Who are the media owners and channels that have been paid to promote LGBTQIA
- Why is “LGBTQIA activism” always tied to political demands like constitutional change and “international accountability” – “Queers for Palestine”
LGBTQIA+ ideology is no longer about private lifestyle choices. It has been weaponized as a geopolitical strategy to gain political influence, impose cultural control, and weaken national sovereignty. The promotion of LGBTQIA+ in Sri Lanka is paid for, organized, and strategic.
If it was truly natural, it would not need a global funding empire to survive.
The project was launched in the West taking to consideration the psychology of developing nations to copy all that the West does. However, the West has discovered the LGBTQIA project has backfired on account of white people who still value religion morals, family & marriage while realizing that they are losing their nation to rising immigrants. With a boycott of companies that sponsored LGBTQIA increasing, together with Trump administrations reversal of all LGBTQIA laws – the West is now reversing LGBTQIA programs, closing down clinics, while detransitioned youth are taking legal action against the medical professionals who hurried them to surgery.
For anyone looking for profit in Sri Lanka – it is good for lawyers with integrity in Sri Lanka to pursue avenues where legal action can remedy the destruction that is being funded instead of being party to it.
This is not a grassroots movement. It is a foreign-funded psychological operation.
Ordinary Sri Lankans are not spending millions on LGBTQIA propaganda—foreign embassies are.
Corporates are not naturally changing HR systems—they are being rewarded by global banks and donors.
Media did not suddenly discover LGBTQIA stories—they are paid through sponsored content and donor journalism.
This entire operation is funded, coordinated, and executed for political purposes.
No foreign power funds another country without expecting something in return.
The LGBTQIA movement is simply a tool—a psychological and social weapon used to reshape nations.
Using one demand – funding it with billions – multiple objectives are being achieved. This is what is taking place.
This is what we need to understand
This is why we need to reject and oppose it.
Every name, every NGO, every “rights activist”, every lawyer, every media voice pushing LGBTQIA ideology in Sri Lanka must now be questioned:
Who is funding them? Who is writing their legal submissions and voice clips?
Sri Lanka has the right to ask: Is this activism, or foreign interference disguised as “equality”.
Anyone taking money to destroy their nation & their people are all traitors to the nation. They are no babies not to foresee the consequences.
Shenali D Waduge
