Only the American Flag Should Be Flown at American Embassies Worldwide

June 10, 2019

The Obama administration’s State Department spent eight years pushing the LGBT agenda onto vulnerable countries that often depend on our assistance, damaging our relations with these countries in the process. When President Trump entered office, he restored U.S. diplomacy’s proper respect for national sovereignty and ceased the Obama-era cultural imperialism that pushed unwanted ideologies on indigenous populations around the world. Thus, the latest directive ordering U.S. embassies not to fly flags celebrating an LGBT lifestyle worldwide is only a natural continuation of this policy, carried out by President Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo—who is doing his job despite insubordinate diplomats and career State Department staffers openly defying orders.

It seems like a simple thing for all to agree on a neutral approach—flying only the American flag at embassies around the world. This policy is unifying and is American. Yet it is apparently too much for a few radical LGBT activists masquerading as diplomats and insubordinate staffers still operating in President Trump’s State Department.

In a 2011 presidential memo, President Obama instructed federal agencies to advance LGBT policies internationally. The effects of this instruction were wide-reaching—and not helpful to our foreign relationships.

In Kenya, President Obama highlighted LGBT policies in a 2015 speech. The Kenyan President, Uhuru Kenyatta, pushed back against this imposition of cultural values. He responded, “The fact of the matter is Kenya and the U.S. share so many values: common love for democracy, entrepreneurship, value for families—these are some things that we share… But there are some things that we must admit we don’t share. Our culture, our societies don’t accept.” President Obama nevertheless continued to push his ideology on other countries. President Trump is actually showing respect for other cultures by refusing to do so.

When President Obama pressed the matter again in Africa, Senegal’s President Macky Sall rebuked him, saying those issues were not supported in his country.

Foreign state leaders weren’t alone in resisting the United States’ cultural imperialism. In 2017, nearly 300 ministers and church leaders across the Caribbean sent a letter urging President Trump to end the U.S. export of the LGBT agenda. They called the attempt to push LGBT policies on their countries “coercion” and they specifically expressed concern over the influence of the State Department’s special envoy for LGBT issues (a role President Obama created in 2015)—who is still pushing LBGT policies on the small and vulnerable country of Nepal (a country, by the way, which is probably more concerned with the thousands killed in its natural disasters than with spreading the LGBT ideology).

In addition to browbeating from our leaders, the U.S. government under the Obama administration also devoted large sums of money to advance LGBT policies from the ground up. In Macedonia, USAID worked to find an LGBT organization to give $300,000 to promote the LBGT agenda in the country, undermining the country’s pro-family government. Nearby, former Vice President Joe Biden pushed LGBT issues in an address to Romanian Civil Society Groups and Students, despite the fact that many in Romania thought the U.S.’s meddling in their country deeply unhelpful.

The United States’ diplomatic platform is intended to strengthen our ties to other countries. The State Department should not use its influential role in world affairs to push a social agenda onto vulnerable countries. Yet that is exactly what President Obama did, and what President Trump and Secretary Pompeo are trying to stop. They should be applauded for doing so.

The push for special LGBT laws implies that human rights law currently does not protect people who identify as LGBT—which is just not true. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights already protect every individual from arbitrary arrest, torture, and extrajudicial killing by the state. The reason that everyone is and should be protected under these laws is because all humans have human dignity, and their sexual attraction or gender preference doesn’t change that. Further, people identifying as LGBT are entitled to the same respect, freedoms, and protections as everyone else, including freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, and association, without fear of reprisal. This is precisely why we should not fly flags celebrating and pushing any social policy in the context of the internal affairs of foreign countries.

The United States has the chance to reset our relations with the countries that our previous push for LGBT policies have alienated. A proper understanding of international human rights law—consistent with our respect for national sovereignty, and preserving the universality of human rights—will enable us to do exactly that.

American embassies should fly only the American flag. This should not be controversial.