Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced Monday that the U.S. State Department and American embassies around the world will fly the “Progress” flag in honor of Pride month traditionally celebrated in June.
Speaking during Monday’s event hosted by the globalist think tank the Atlantic Council and co-hosted by GLIFAA, the LGBTQI+ employee affinity group for the U.S. State Department and other foreign affairs agencies, Blinken said it is “hugely important” for U.S. embassies to fly the “Progress” flag to show support for the “defense, support, the protection of the LGBTQI persons around the world.”
He also announced that the State Department in Washington, DC, will fly the “Progress” flag June 26-28 — commemorating the anniversaries of the 2015 Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage, and the 1969 Stonewall Riots, largely regarded as the beginning of the global rights movement for the gay community and the basis for recognizing June as “Pride Month.”
“I think this is going to be a significant couple of days, and we will see the Progress flag flying at the State Department,” Blinken stated.
The flag itself takes the standard eight-striped rainbow design of the 1970s-era “Pride” flag and adds a number of colored chevrons representing those who identify as transgender (light blue and pink) and people of color (black and brown). Some versions include a yellow triangle with a purple circle to represent intersex people. The design was dreamed up in 2018 by Portland-based designer Daniel Quasar, who uses “xe/xem pronouns,” and updated again this year by Intersex Equality Rights UK. Basically, as the ever-expanding alphabet soup of LBGTQI+, the “Progress” flag seems to strive to symbolically represent anyone who is not white and heterosexual.
The secretary’s comments came two weeks after the Defense Department announced that it will not allow the “Pride” flag to be flown at installations under its purview, after the Biden administration reversed an order issued by former President Donald Trump’s then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on flying the “Pride flag” at some United States embassies. Overturning the Trump-era policy on the matter, Blinken authorized diplomats to fly the Pride flag before May 17, which marks an international day against homophobia, transphobia, and biphobia, through June.
When announcing the decision to reverse an order from President Donald Trump, Blinken argued that demonstration of the U.S. official support to LGBT community is needed due to increased anti-gay violence while Trump was in office.
“We’ve seen violence directed against LGBTQI people around the world increase,” Blinken said. “And so, I think the United States playing the role that it should be playing in standing up for and defending the rights of LGBTQI people is something that the department is going to take on and take on immediately. Raising the pride flag is one way to outright show LGBTQ solidarity.”
Blinken noted that displaying the flag was not a requirement, and asked diplomats to make their decision “in light of local conditions,” considering the U.S. has embassies in nations such as Saudi Arabia, where homosexuality is a crime punishable by death. Overall, there are 71 foreign nations that criminalize homosexuality, and the U.S. have embassies in 70 of them.
Contrary to Blinken instructions, the White House released a statement on June 1 announcing that the Biden-Harris administration would “ensure pride flags fly on U.S. Embassies around the world,” demonstrating that “the United States will lead on LGBTQ+ human rights around the world.”
The U.S. Embassy to the Holy See announced its decision to wave a “Pride” flag outside the Vatican, and numerous U.S. embassies in Western Europe are now flaunting the rainbow flag. Though Biden will wave the flag in the Vatican’s face or hoist it in Germany and Brazil (where the Trump administration previously denied requests from both embassies to fly rainbow flags), that’s not the case in nations with laws forbidding homosexuality.
The only places the Biden administration seems comfortable raising the “Pride” flag are where homosexuality and “transgenderism” are accepted. The situation seems to be another example of hypocritical virtue-signaling from the current administration.
In May, the U.S. embassies and consular posts were encouraged to display Black Lives Matter flags to commemorate the death of George Floyd.
That the United States is endorsing any flag but the American flag is problematic. The U.S. government should not be flying the “Pride” flag at its embassies at all, nor should it be promoting the LGBTQ movement via flying their flag.
