When it comes to former president Trump and the gays, one of the innumerable enduring myths perpetrated by media claims he banned US embassies from flying the rainbow gay Pride flag during the month of June. This lie is a personal favorite as a radiant example of the media’s pettiness during the Trump years and the degree to which they’ll just make something up or, at the very least, refuse to conduct the tiniest bit of due diligence to fact-check a falsehood they want so badly to be true.
Here’s what really happened: in 2019, of the 307 US embassies, consulates, and diplomatic missions around the world, three requested to fly the rainbow gay Pride flag during the month of June. The embassies were told by Trump’s State Department they were permitted to fly the gay flag anywhere on the premises but were reminded that no flag other than the American flag may adorn the property’s central flag pole. A handful of embassies, including Berlin under the direction of openly gay ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, did display the flag — two flags in that instance.
It was a non-story. But just this week, New York Times White House correspondent Annie Karni repeated the lie on Twitter, writing, ‘Last year, Trump refused to acknowledge Pride and embassies were prohibited from flying Pride flags’ ahead of an article blowing rainbow smoke up the Biden administration’s rear-end by praising his fight for LGBTQ rights, or whatever.
During his more than 40 years in Washington, Biden has been no friend to the gays, at one point calling homosexual federal employees ‘security risks’. He also voted for the Defense of Marriage Act and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, as well as legislation cutting federal funding to schools that taught homosexuality as an acceptable lifestyle and a law banning HIV-positive people from immigrating to the US. At the same time Biden was fighting to keep marriage between one man and one woman, gay magazines like the Advocate praised citizen Trump in glossy spreads over his libertine attitude toward homosexuality and gay marriage.
None of that matters now — and Karni has refused to correct the record despite a barrage of users on Twitter calling her out. That niggling fabrication about Pride flags and embassies has become a political flashpoint during Biden’s first Pride month as president with the left, as they are wont to do, ner-ner-ner-ner-ner-ing conservatives over a bit of fiddle-faddle no one cares about, and was based on a lie.
Just to really drive it home, those clammy-souled agents of godlessness and hate that we call journalists unzipped and dropped trou upon seeing the US Embassy to the Holy See, our outpost at the Vatican, had strung up the rainbow banderole this year for Pride month.
Blessed be! What a glorious F-U to the people they hate so dearly. It appears the communist Pope who pontificates about global warming and systemic racism still isn’t enough — he remains technically Christian, after all, thereby retaining a cardinal sin against the politburo — so let’s make his followers squirm a bit more with a gay flag, the reasoning goes.
And while Biden might not be the president anyone wanted — he was simply the not-Trump option — at least the creepy, confused old geezer has people around him who understand the kind of mean-spirited paltriness that makes the Democratic base purr like a kitten on a vibrator. The country may be going to hell, but what we really need is more government-backed flaunting of tiresome identitarian bromides. That’ll show ‘em!
They’ve all become Eric Cartman from South Park taunting his friends with some tiny personal victory of interest to no one else. Flag waving and fake martyrs like George Floyd is how these people are going to get through the next four years, channeling their violent, destructive tendencies into a trite, impotent perpetual spiking of the football.
America is a weird nation. Most the world already sees us as a bunch of cartoon characters — and let’s face it, we are — so if embassies are where we’d like to let our freak flags fly, I support that, but we’ve got to step it up. On the anniversary of Floyd’s death, some embassies chose to don the Black Lives Matter flag. Yet gays and communists are increasingly among the least amusing and ridiculous things America has to offer. Here you can find something to celebrate every day of the year and our embassies should reflect that. Hang a BLM flag on May 25, sure — but I also want to see embassies strewn in bubble wrap on January 31 for National Bubble Wrap Appreciation Day, spooks and spirits on May 3 for National Paranormal Day, umbrellas galore on February 3 for National Umbrella Day, embassies bathed in pink on March 9 for National Barbie Day and great feasts on April 15 for National Glazed Spiral Ham Day.
Why not turn some embassies into salons on June 26 for National Beauticians Day? Who wouldn’t want to see the Jolly Roger flying high on September 24 for Talk Like a Pirate Day, and stop on by one of our diplomatic outposts for some licks and cuddles on March 23 for National Puppy Day. It’s time to show the world America is more than sexual minorities and race hustlers; we also celebrate National Quilting Day on March 20 and Hug a Plumber Day on April 25.
Noticeably absent from the State Department’s rainbow bacchanalia this year would be those embassies in Muslim nations who — much like American corporations changing only their US social media accounts to rainbow colors — have remained silent and monochrome throughout the Middle East.
Don’t expect the left to demand any sort of liberation in those parts of the world. I’m guessing Pride this year in Saudi Arabia will be virtual once again.
