Mr. Grenell would not say whether the administration was considering withholding additional cooperation, or ratcheting back current intelligence sharing with countries that criminalize homosexuality. His office is forming a group to review the issue and develop ideas, intelligence officials said.

“If a country that we worked in as the United States intelligence community was arresting women because of their gender, we would absolutely do something about it,” Mr. Grenell said. “Ultimately, the United States is safer when our partners respect basic human rights.”

Mr. Grenell has also suggested in meetings that foreign aid be used as an incentive to prod countries with bans on homosexuality to remove them, said Hadi Damien, the founder of Lebanon’s Beirut Pride group, who participated in the discussions Mr. Grenell held as ambassador to Germany. But Mr. Grenell has been careful to try to use aid as an incentive to alter laws, not a sanction against countries.

“While the U.S., or any other country, cannot influence how other countries process their domestic affairs, the U.S. can push toward change through the voice of its officials and through the implementation of its programs,” Mr. Damien said.

While Mr. Grenell is serving only in an acting capacity, and his appointment will likely end in September or when the Senate confirms a replacement, he has begun work on some controversial changes, including a review aimed at shrinking the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and sending some officers detailed to that office back to their home intelligence agencies. He has also rebuffed calls by Democrats for him to hold off on those changes.

“I am not a seat warmer,” Mr. Grenell said. “The president asked me to do a job and I am going to do the job to the best of my ability.”

In a letter sent last week to the agencies he oversees, Mr. Grenell said the intelligence community needed to do better to detect, and respond to, discrimination and harassment of gay, lesbian and transgender people.