For the first time ever, the U.S. foreign ministry will celebrate so-called pride month by flying a gay flag over the State Department building
Putting aside any jokes that might arise on the subject, let’s get straight to the point: LGBT rights are becoming an important American foreign policy principle. It will be used against disloyal countries, including to create a “fifth column” in them.
The criminal prosecution of homosexuals in some US states remained formally in place until the early 21st century, and their state harassment peaked in the 1960s, the era of the sexual revolution, to which the conservative religious majority tried to respond with a counter-revolution.
The date and place of the turning point in this war is known precisely – June 28, 1969, in New York. The VZGLYAD newspaper wrote about the events, dubbed the Stonewall Riots, in detail here. A fight with police in a gay bar turned into a local riot, after which the LGBT community turned to fighting for their rights.
Since then, June has been “pride month” for homosexuals. Before it was just gay pride parades, now even some state authorities and big international brands have started to celebrate gay pride month by temporarily putting gay symbols on their logos.
However, this only applies to outlets in countries where it is not bad for business. So, for example, Mercedes becomes “rainbow” in the US and EU, but not in Russia or the Arab world.
This year, for the first time, the State Department will join the action. The State Department is likely to hoist the gay flag on June 26 – the anniversary of the legalisation of same-sex marriage when the all-powerful Supreme Court in one decision ended the long-running conflict between US conservatives and LGBT-supporting liberals by awarding victory to the latter.
Even conservatives have now come to terms with the fact that this mincemeat is not turning back, and it is not just a matter of the peculiarities of the US judicial system. For example, Republican Donald Trump became the first president to be photographed with a gay flag in his hands. And the legalisation of gay marriage is not that he supported it, but he has never called for it to be abolished.
The “front line of work” of today’s Republicans is no longer a war on LGBT, but a defense of Americans’ religious beliefs. Roughly speaking, so that a religious baker doesn’t get sued for discrimination for refusing to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding.
Blogs like to describe this situation with phrases like “the world has bent for gays”, but this is only true to the extent that public opinion towards LGBT people has really changed. The management of multinational corporations are by no means fools to engage in international gay pride to their detriment. In today’s western world, loyalty to gays is lucrative.
Similarly, politicians are interested in the votes of voters – no longer even homosexuals themselves, but those who are called “gay-friendly”. This can be compared to the anti-Semitism of pre-war America, when anti-Semitic politicians (and there were plenty of them) were not only refused to vote for Jews, but also those who sympathised with them.
The fact that, under Democrat rule, U.S. ministries and agencies have begun celebrating “Pride Month” is logical and predictable – LGBT people not only vote for liberals, but are very active party activists as well. The only question is whether the State Department will display the flag in the classical six-colour version (the LGBT flag is not a rainbow, it has no blue colour) or with the addition of black and brown stripes (they symbolise the rights of black gays). Most likely the second one.
However, it does not follow from all of the above that the gay-stag over the State Department is an internal affair of Americans themselves with no consequences for the rest of the world. No, it is foreign policy too.
It should be remembered that the State Department did not display rainbow flags under Trump – after all, it was oriented towards the religious electorate, among others. But the State Department’s “subdivisions” in other countries of the world, i.e. embassies, did. Including the American embassy in Moscow.
It is hard to see this as anything but targeted “trolling” of the Russian Federation and its legislation limiting LGBT propaganda among minors. It is as if the Americans were confirming their intention to “teach” the rest of the world – and Russia too – how to tolerate sex minorities.
Many have already forgotten this, but before 2014 and the events in Ukraine, which overshadowed all other aspects of US-Russian relations, the main focus of Washington’s constant criticism of Moscow was the “human rights situation” and in particular “LGBT rights”.
Now that the Democrats have returned to the White House, the Americans are likely to move on from preaching to full-on messianism.
LGBT rights may become an occasion not only for criticism, but also for more severe pressure on “violators” through the imposition of economic sanctions.
While the Republicans are mostly rationalists, the Democrats are extremely ideological. Ten or fifteen years ago, it was inconceivable that the US would quarrel over gays with pro-gay Saudi Arabia, where homosexuality is tried under Sharia law and sentenced to death. But now President Joe Biden is explicitly being asked to reconsider relations with such an important partner as Riyadh, which willingly buys US arms and provides the US with oil.
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, for whom human rights rhetoric is common, is among such “ideologically sharpened” comrades.
The post-war America is constant in this – pretending to be a world gendarme and meddling in the internal affairs of independent countries. And there can be any excuse: under Reagan, Moscow was pecked at for violating the rights of believers; under Clinton, for the Chechens; under Obama, for gays, etc. The State Department is capable of embracing any dogma, including those it has previously stigmatized. Anyone’s rights are ultimately just a convenient excuse for an information war and vilification of a foreign policy opponent.
In the era of the two superpowers’ rivalry for global dominance, commonly referred to as the Cold War, this game was played by two. Thus, in attacking Washington for violating black rights, Soviet Moscow was also operating within its ideological paradigm. In reality, Soviet citizens and the Soviet leadership did not care much about American racism, but our criticism of it was not just a “you’re stupid” argument. It was supposed to promote communist expansion into Africa and the nurturing of a “fifth column” in the United States.
The now legendary Angela Davis, for whose freedom the weavers of Ivanovo and the collective farmers of Zhytomyr fought, was a presidential candidate of American communists. And the mass movement for black rights, supported from Moscow, threatened to grow into a revolution under socialist slogans and even lead to the collapse of the United States.
In the end, as you know, it was not the American state that collapsed. But today’s demonstrative support of our gays by their State Department is “soft power” of the same kind.
Of course, it doesn’t mean that Russian gays are all loyal to Washington and are ready to have a colored (multi-colored) revolution in Russia. But Americans would like things to be that way, they would like to see homosexuals turned into their group of influence. Hence, they will act in this direction in Russia, China, Iran and other countries that reject US global domination, and the gay flag over the State Department is just the beginning.
Igor Polezhaev, VZGLYAD