Rainbow flag flies again at U.S. Embassy in Macedonia

Conservatives who hoped that once Donald Trump became president the U.S. government would stop flying the “rainbow flag” at American embassies abroad, as happened often under former President Obama to mark various LGBTQ events, were disappointed Wednesday.

The U.S. Embassy in Macedonia tweeted this:

IDAHOT is celebrated worldwide every year by homosexual, bisexual, transgender, and other self-identified “queer” activists, one of many LGBTQ activist “days” on the calendar. Under Obama, the White House issued supportive IDAHOT proclamations in recent years, and several American embassies reportedly flew the “rainbow” flag under Old Glory.

Trump did not issue a formal IDAHOT proclamation, but at his State Department there was a muted celebration of the anti-“phobia” day with its “Worldwide Celebration of Sexual and Gender Diversities.” In addition to the flying homo-transgender rainbow flag in Macedonia, openly homosexual U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam Ted Osius took to the State Department’s official blog to honor IDAHOT.

The State Department’s official Twitter account retweeted Osius’ essay on the State Department blog, DIPNOTE. He wrote Wednesday:

“The International Day against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia (IDAHOT) was created in 2004 to draw the attention of policymakers, opinion leaders, and the public to the violence and discrimination experienced by LGBTI people internationally. And each June, we celebrate Pride Month in the United States and overseas. I am happy to reaffirm these messages because defending the equality of LGBTI persons is at the core of our commitment to advancing human rights globally — the heart and conscience of our diplomacy.”

Osius lives in Hanoi with his homosexual “husband,” Clayton Bond, and their adopted son and daughter. He recently spoke at an LGBTQ activist leaders’ conference in Washington, D.C., where he told the mostly LGBT audience, “There is no turning back” from Obama’s foreign advocacy of homosexual and transgender “rights” as “human rights.”

It was then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who in 2011 declared the new Obama approach, which alienated people of faith worldwide as undermining the historic, Judeo-Christian notion of human rights, and pitting newly-invented “gay/transgender” rights such as homosexual “marriage” against traditional societies.

In his blog piece, Osius described how he uses his and his “spouse’s” encounters in more conservative cultures like Vietnam’s to spread the message of acceptance for homosexuality and transgenderism. When a Vietnamese teenage boy asked him if he “had encountered difficulties” in his life or career “as a result of being gay,” Osius answered, “When I first joined the Foreign Service, we could lose our jobs for being out.”

He continued: “Because there is strength in numbers, we created a group, and we persuaded the State Department to stop discrimination based on sexual orientation. As American society grew more accepting, we insisted that our families be treated with the same respect as traditional families.”