On the first day of Pride month, Republican members of Congress signed onto a bill that would ban rainbow flags at embassies.
Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Matt Gaetz (R-FL) are two of the bills most vociferous supporters.
Related: Marjorie Taylor Greene wants a drag queen “arrested & charged” for being near children
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Reps. Louie Gohmert (R-TX), Rick Crawford (R-AR), and Brian Mast (R-FL) all signed on as co-sponsors of the “Only Old Glory Act” introduced by Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-SC).
The bill currently has 20 co-sponsors, most among the most strident opponents of LGBTQ rights and racial equity.
The Republican effort is in response to embassies that flew the Black Lives Matter banner and Pride flags in previous years. Rainbow flags were mostly banned under the Trump administration and required permission to be flown by the White House. Some requests were reportedly denied.
The proposed law would only allow the United States and military flags to be flown at embassies and diplomatic facilities.
“During my campaign for Congress, I promised that I would always put America First,” Greene said in a statement, saying that the bill will “prevent Hate America flags from flying over American embassies.”
“President Biden’s State Department has already raised a flag over our embassies that doesn’t represent the vast majority of Americans,” she said, apparently referring to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s statement in January that he would allow embassies to fly the rainbow flag again.
Greene also claimed “rogue members of the State Department” were flying “the flag of the radical Marxist group, Black Lives Matter.”
Blinken has said that the State Department needs to take a more active role in promoting LGBTQ rights around the world.
“We’ve seen, I believe, the highest number of murders of transgender people, particularly women of color, that we’ve seen ever… 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,” he said at his confirmation hearing.
The bill is not expected to pass.
