Folks, this is good news for The Resistance. Mike Pompeo issued a decree recently, reversing an Obama policy (naturally) which permitted U.S. embassies to fly the rainbow colored flag in honor of Pride Month. In Boston Tea Party-esque defiance, Pompeo’s orders are being ignored and the rainbow banner yet waves.
The United States Embassy in New Delhi is lit up in #Pride colors to celebrate #PrideMonth. #LGBTPrideMonth pic.twitter.com/v6gxzAps8a
— U.S. Embassy India (@USAndIndia) June 4, 2019
“This is a category one insurrection,” said one diplomat, who like others interviewed about the sentiment over the rejections, which were not made in writing, spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of being fired. [Editor’s Note: This is an interesting variation of the standard language which is “condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the topic.” This is blunt.]
The flap over the flags started when the State Department did not send out an official cable this year with guidelines for marking Pride Month, as it has in years past. In 2011, the Obama administration directed agencies involved with foreign policy to promote LGBT rights, a striking policy for an agency that, up to the early 1990s, considered homosexuality a security risk and cause for termination. […]
Some gay employees in the foreign and civil service say the ban on flying the rainbow flag is just the tip of an iceberg of slights.
Pompeo has not issued a statement for Pride Month, as he did last year. He did not attend the State Department’s annual Pride Day event for two years running as his predecessors usually did, though he was traveling in Europe this year. Instead, he dispatched Deputy Secretary of State John J. Sullivan, a veteran diplomat who promised that the State Department will advocate for gay diplomats and their families.
Don’t hold your breath. There’s not going to be any gay advocacy with an evangelical wingnut in charge of the State Department. And it won’t surprise you that all of Wingnuttia is up in arms over this gesture. Here’s a sample.
I wish to God this was parody, but I know it's not. Maybe you should go reread that Bible you thump so self-righteously and see what Jesus had to say about love, tolerance, and inclusivity. You're saying you're more of a child of God than a gay person and You.Are.Not. Wake up.
— Ursula Faw (@ursulafaw56) June 9, 2019
I’d guess that the only parts of the bible that “kevin” has read are the ones handed to him in his bible-study class or by his pastor: never more than two verses in a row, and skipping all the parts about love and justice. He’s a Pauline.
You’re referring to Paul of Tarsus, who “saw the light” on the road to Damascus and was instrumental in founding the Christian church, that Paul? I didn’t know he taught with two verses and skipped the parts on love and justice. Can you tell me where the read more about that?
This is great.
I love the Washington Post article. These people in the embassies are calling bullshit on Mike Pompeo and the theocrats. I detest those people because they claim to be worshippers of God and disciples of Christ and every effing thing they do is antithetical to both the teachings of Christ and the workings of nature. (I see “God” in nature, that’s one of my definitions.) You read the piece I did on the woman who had to give birth to a massively deformed child. That is not the way of any sane God. That is the way of a warped political system and control issues, and this story here is the same thing. The wingnuts want to control peoples’ sexual expression — they’re totally insane on that topic.
I can’t imagine wanting to control a stranger’s life. The people who need to control the lives of strangers are just nuts. Stay out of the lives of others.
It’s odd, isn’t it, that the very same people who say that regulations keeping corporations honest, are bad, but at the exact same time, are all for laws suppressing individuals and their rights?
I have noticed that irony. However, lack of regulations make it easy for people to skate by and create a shoddy product — and that means more money for the people at the top. That’s pure GOP thinking, how can we screw the little guy and line our pockets more?
Yep. I will never understand it.
This Kevin guy sounds more like a GRU operative. Look at the constructions of his sentences in his thread and how and were he uses some words. It’s like translating from Russian to English. Interesting……
Wow. I’m going to go check that out. Thank you!
Good for the embassies! Resistance is not futile! It is encouraging to all of us to know that we still have good people serving in our government, even if the repug appointed leaders are questionable human beings. Show us your rainbows!
My theory has long been that the only reason this government hasn’t shut down altogether is because of the career civil servants. If we didn’t have those competent professional men and women holding down the fort, we would be in an incredible world of hurt.
Regarding that tweet in your story: When I hear/read “Christians” citing the bible that way I’m always reminded of a line from (the book version) The DaVinci Code – “The bible didn’t arrive by fax from heaven.”
None of the New Testament was even written down until long after the Jesus depicted in the bible was dead and gone. Rather, the stories and even gospels were handed down through multiple generations orally. That alone means some of the stuff changed – everyone has taken part in the group circle exercise where the leader whispers a story to the person next to him/her and it gets relayed the same way around the circle. Often, in fact almost always there are significant changes when the last person tells the story out loud & sometimes the outcome is even changed!
Then, considering that consider this: The bible as we know it was commissioned by a pagan ruler (Constantine) who wanted to quell unrest and figured consolidating competing religious beliefs into a single & dominant one would help him rule. He had those who “compiled” the bible include aspects of other religions and common pagan practices in a “something for everyone” type way. That’s how what we call the bible was created and in the Council of Nicea which debated many aspects of what would go into the bible (including the divinity of Jesus – a strong block felt he was just an ordinary man with a powerful message but not divine and hadn’t risen from the dead) over the centuries the bible would not only be translated into new languages (itself problematic for accuracy as anyone who speaks multiple languages can tell you – and Latin is a dead language for a reason as it is limited in vocabulary) but copied by monks tasked with doing so – and there’s good reason to believe they did their share of editing along the way.
So, in the end I find it hard to take the bible & especially the New Testament as a factual accounting of events. There is little independent historical accounting of Jesus’ life and death and the freaking Romans wrote down everything. So did scribes of the great Temple.
I grew up as a person of faith but lost it even before I learned details on how the bible I’d been taught to regard as authority came about But when it comes to challenging anyone claiming it is “the word of god” I think the simple line from The DaVinci Code says it best – “The bible did not arrive by fax from heaven.”
kevin@kevin4jesus1 UCLA Bruin? college educated?
Is a fake troll, click on his ‘handle’ and you’ll see how utterly ridiculous his pro-Trump gibberish is.
Call me a racist? naive? out of touch? He (Trump) has done NOTHING for anyone other than himself, his rich buddies, family, and murderous tyrant dick-tators around the world. Sure there are some, but, how can a black man in America, even today, support such a racist, bigoted person like Trump who mostly doesn’t even try to hide it? But….there were Jews in Europe who initially supported Hitler too. Look how that turned out.