After GPAHE documented the bigoted backgrounds of the speakers, dozens of MEPs called for the cancellation of the summit. Nevertheless, the event went ahead.
On Tuesday, February 3, the European Parliament hosted a summit where speakers defended Uganda’s highly repressive anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, mocked transgender people, and lamented bans on so-called “conversion therapy.” These positions were presented under the banner of “free speech” during an event that brought together anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-woman actors from Europe, Africa, and the Americas, including U.S.-based organizations such as the Heritage Foundation, Family Watch International, and Alliance Defending Freedom International.
The event was organized by the anti-woman and anti-LGBTQ+ group Political Network for Values (PNfV). Officially titled the VII Transatlantic Summit, it was held under the banner “Free speech vs regulated speech. Strengthening the pillars of democracy.”
Human rights organizations and dozens of Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) raised formal complaints in the days leading up to the event over the participation of Ugandan MP Lucy Akello. Despite these objections, Akello was there. She helped pass an inhumane anti-LGBTQ+ law in her home country that criminalizes same-sex conduct, and potentially imposes the death penalty for those convicted of “aggravated homosexuality.”
Amid the controversy surrounding her appearance as a speaker at the European Parliament, Akello publicly defended the Anti-Homosexuality Act during her intervention. “It wasn’t about killing any homosexual. No, it was about protecting our children who were being coerced, who were being forced into homosexual activities,” she said, in a speech that was met with applause from attendees. Akello was introduced by a MEP from the Spanish far-right party Vox, who described her presence in the European Parliament as an “honor.”
Lucy Akello speaking at the VII Transatlantic Summit.
LGBTQ+ people became a target of mockery and hostile rhetoric by several speakers at the summit. UK Catholic priest Benedict Kiely compared transgender identity to people identifying as animals. He accused politicians of “moral cowardice” for refusing to state what he described as “verifiably true” facts, arguing that “a woman cannot be a man or vice versa, and it’s not possible to be a cat just because you say you identify as a cat.”
Kiely added: “It might appear comedic and silly, and on occasion it can be, but in reality the control and the falsification of speech, of words, is now both dangerous and insidious and increasing rapidly in Europe.”
Defenses of conversion therapy
Another panelist, Bart Jan Spruyt, a Dutch historian and journalist, echoed this anti-LGBTQ+ narrative. He claimed that “today’s world is an inversion, a world turned upside down,” in which “what we ought to say becomes forbidden, as it is seen as an act of violence.”
During his intervention, Spruyt argued that the Netherlands is “on the brink” of introducing a ban on conversion therapy, “which includes a ban on pastoral conversations with young people with gender dysphoria,” adding that “you’re forced to affirm the confused feelings of these young people, and waiting for healing becomes criminal,” while “any other advice is regarded as hate speech.”
Another group that participated in the summit, the Spanish organization Christian Lawyers (Abogados Cristianos), is rabidly anti-LGBTQ+ and also opposes bans on so-called conversion therapy, a cruel “treatment” that tries to change sexual orientation or identity and has been described as akin to torture by a UN Special Rapporteur.
Protest at the European Parliament in response to the presence of Lucy Akello. (Source: PNfV on X).
Rodrigo Iván Cortés, PNfV’s vice president and founder of Mexico’s Frente Nacional por la Familia (National Front for the Family), also took to the floor and presented himself as a victim. Cortés was convicted in 2023 of gender-based political violence against Mexican transgender Congresswoman Salma Luévano.
During his remarks, Cortés claimed that laws addressing “gender-based violence” are intended “to promote and justify violence committed by men —who declare themselves to be women— against real women.” Following this transphobic statement, he argued that such legislation results in “white heterosexual Catholic men,” like himself, being “canceled.”
Calls to cancel the summit
Prior to the event, the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) warned about the anti-LGBTQ+ backgrounds of several speakers and the groups behind the summit. Based on GPAHE’s research, 29 MEPs from the Greens/EFA, Renew Europe, The Left and the Socialists and Democrats urged European Parliament President Roberta Metsola to cancel the event. They argued that “the event attacks the dignity and integrity of both women and colleagues from the LGBTIQ+ community.”
However, the European Parliament later distanced itself from the summit, stating that it was sponsored by two parliamentary groups: Patriots for Europe and the European Conservatives and Reformists Group (ECR).
Invoking the event’s theme of “free speech,” organizers and participants portrayed themselves as victims of censorship while disseminating anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and disinformation from inside the European Parliament.
During the summit, Ernesto Araújo, Brazil’s former foreign minister under Jair Bolsonaro, accused the current Brazilian government, led by Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, of being a “fake democracy,” despite Lula having won the elections democratically. In his remarks, Araújo omitted the fact that Jair Bolsonaro, the president under whom he served, was sentenced in 2025 to more than 27 years in prison for plotting a military coup and seeking to “annihilate” Brazil’s democracy.
Promotional image for the VII Transatlantic Summit with logos of its sponsoring organizations. (Source: PNfV).
Beyond advancing its anti-rights agenda, the event was also used to attack the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA), which regulates online content across the European Union for the purpose of safety. The DSA requires social media platforms to remove content that infringes the laws of EU member states, and makes social media algorithms more transparent to reduce the potential for spreading disinformation.
For far-right actors, however, content moderation, particularly of hate speech, is framed as an attack on free speech and “religious freedom.” In practice, this narrative seeks to legitimize the targeting of specific communities, especially LGBTQ+ people and migrants.
The DSA has become a focal point for criticism from the global far right and the Trump administration, which portray the law as a form of censorship. Speakers at the summit repeatedly echoed and reinforced this framing. Adina Portaru, senior counsel for Europe at ADF International, described the DSA as “legislation that represents one of the most dangerous threats to freedom of expression online in the western world today.”
Musk tweeted in support of ADFI’s position on the DSA. (Source: X).
Several speakers also defended Elon Musk and his social media platform, X, at a moment of heightened reputational crisis for the company following the circulation of sexist content generated by Grok, X’s artificial intelligence chatbot, which produced more than one million sexualized images of women and children.
On the same day that the European Parliament hosted this event, French police raided X’s Paris offices as part of an ongoing investigation into suspected abuse of algorithms and fraudulent data extraction, which the prosecutor’s office said it had widened to cover complaints Grok.
In December 2025, X was fined €120 million for violating the DSA. The European Commission based its decision on deceptive changes to the platform’s blue checkmark system, limited access to data for researchers, and deficiencies in its advertising repository.
Referring to the sanction, Portaru argued that the fine illustrates “how the [European] Commission has positioned itself as the arbiter of truth and acceptable speech.” Similarly, Branko Grims, a Slovenian MEP from the European People’s Party, characterized the fine as “the imposition of leftist propaganda and, of course, censorship.” In his remarks, Grims called for a “return” to what he described as Europe’s “Western civilization,” grounded in “Christian values,” rather than what he portrayed as the suppression of free speech through censorship.
Among the American speakers, Jay W. Richards, Vice President of Social and Domestic Policy at the Heritage Foundation, referenced the case of the right-wing satirical news site The Babylon Bee, which was banned from Twitter for posting a transphobic article that violated the platform’s hateful conduct policy. The account was later reinstated after Elon Musk acquired X.
Sharon Slater during her intervention at the VII Transatlantic Summit.
Sharon Slater, president of Family Watch International, an anti-LGBTQ+ organization that seeks to influence international policy, particularly at the United Nations and across Africa, was another U.S.-based participant. Slater portrayed herself as a victim of censorship, claiming that human rights organizations have labeled her work as “hate speech” and “extremism.”
To reinforce her image as a victim, Slater cited an article published by GPAHE—titled “European Parliament to Host Summit Backed by Anti-LGBTQ+ Bigoted Groups,”— adding, “this is us,” and framing critical reporting as a personal attack that, in her words, “demonizes” her and damages her reputation.
Throughout her career, Slater has made false claims portraying LGBTQ+ people as disease-prone. At the event, she distanced herself from the Uganda law that criminalized LGBTQ+ people, dismissing the accusations as “absurd.” However, media outlets such as OpenDemocracy have published articles linking her to the political organizing behind the infamous legislation.
Another anti-LGBTQ+ American figure who attended the event was Brian Brown, co-founder of the U.S.-based National Organization for Marriage. Brown shared a video on his X account alongside José Antonio Kast, Chile’s newly elected president and former president of the Political Network for Values (PNfV) from 2022 to 2024.
Kast was the final speaker of the event. In his remarks, he highlighted his leadership of PNfV and struck a triumphant tone, claiming that those who had warned him that leading an organization like PNfV would jeopardize his political future had been proven wrong.
