Some US embassies still hoist rainbow flags, despite Washington's view

Since the State Department rejected all embassy demands to hoist rainbow flags outside mission buildings during LGBTQ pride month this year, some US diplomats have found ways to challenge, or at least circumvent, the new policy.

The facades of the US missions in Seoul and Chennai, India, are partially hidden behind large rainbow flags, while The embassy in New Delhi is beautiful in the rainbow color lights. The website of the Embassy in Santiago de Chile shows a video of the chief diplomat waving a rainbow flag last month on the occasion of the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and biphobia.

The website of the Vienna embassy presents a photo of a rainbow flag floating below Old Glory on a mast coming out of the building, a statement from Diplomats for Equality and a story about a Professor giving a lecture on the visibility and growth of LGBT rights.

US diplomats in Jerusalem participated in the Pride and Tolerance March and several ambassadors tweeted pictures of themselves in the parades of local pride or standing in front of embassies surrounded by employees holding letters spelling PRIDE.

"It's a Category 1 insurgency," said a diplomat who, like other people polled about the feeling of rejection, unwritten, spoke about the condition of the insurgency. anonymity for fear of being fired.

A practice regularly approved in many embassies for most of the decade now requires approval at the highest level of the State Department. But this year, as reported by NBC News for the first time, all applications were rejected.

The clash over the flags began when the state department did not send official cable this year containing guidelines to mark the month of pride, as it has done in the past. In 2011, the Obama administration tasked agencies involved in foreign policy to promote LGBT rights, a striking policy for an agency that, until the early 1990s, considered homosexuality as a security risk and a reason for termination.

The Obama Administration's Proud month guidelines included rules for laying rainbow flags from poles outside embassies: they must be smaller than the American flag and fly over the flag. -this. But permission was granted without any problem. In 2016, authorizations were left to each ambassador or chef de mission.

This process changed last year after Mike Pompeo became Secretary of State. An evangelical Christian who believes that marriage should be defined as between a man and a woman, said Pompeo said that homosexual employees would be respected and treated like everyone else. But he downplayed the importance of some symbols of LGBT rights, while introducing several new panels and specialized envoys on issues of religious freedom.

The advisory cable released last year indicated that diplomats must obtain high-level approval from the State Department's Management Bureau to display a rainbow flag.

The State Department refused to answer questions regarding the month's notice of pride and the ban on the rainbow flag. But two diplomats aware of the events said that all requests last year had been approved.

This year, there has been a change. Embassies in Israel, Germany, Brazil and Latvia, as well as some other posts, have asked for rainbow flags. All were denied, said a state department person aware of the events.

Although most embassies seem to follow the line, the policy change seems to have sparked a kind of revolt among diplomats.

The foreign service officers complained on a private Facebook page that no one should have asked for permission anyway.

Some embassies who have raised the flag in previous years chose this year to commemorate the month by posting President Trump's statement affirming LGBT rights on their websites and urging countries to join a global campaign to decriminalize LGBT homosexuality. The initiative was the idea of ​​Richard Grenell, American ambassador to Germany, homosexual.

Some embassies have become playful with the posting of Trump's statement. In Brasilia, for example, the statement is surmounted by a photo of two hands holding five letters Play-Doh in the colors of the rainbow: LGBTQ. But some did not mention Trump's statement at all, an absence made even more blatant by the juxtaposition of declarations of ambassadors and secretaries of state from previous years.

Some gay employees of the civil service and foreign affairs said that the ban on wearing the rainbow flag was only the visible part of the iceberg.

Pompeo does not have issued a statement for the month of pride, as it did last year. He did not attend the Department of State's annual pride day for two consecutive years, unlike his predecessors, though he is traveling to Europe this year. Instead, he dispatched Deputy Secretary of State John J. Sullivan, a veteran diplomat who promised that the State Department would defend homosexual diplomats and their families.

"Day after day, a death by a thousand denominations, our American LGBT + rights are being eroded by the removal of a guide here, the rewrite of a policy out there or just the silent demise of". a website, "Robyn McCutcheon, a transgender woman who has held various posts abroad wrote in her blog" Transgender at State ", lamenting what she had observed across the government these past two years. "It's not surprising that this erosion is also happening at the US State Department."

Some recognize that their worst fears have not been corroborated.

The administration has appointed several gay ambassadors. Trump became the first Republican president to make a statement to celebrate the month of pride. Nobody was fired for sexual orientation, but some said they felt more vulnerable after Trump attempted to ban transgender people from the military.

Better, they said, do not even discuss LGBT issues publicly and run the risk of attracting attention to them.

"We are flying under the radar," said one employee. "We survive because they do not realize we are here."