Biden Admin Accused of ‘Desecration’ for Flying LGBT Pride Flag at US Vatican Embassy

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American Catholics reacted with outrage after the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See on Monday hoisted a large LGBT pride flag.

The moment: In a Twitter post Tuesday celebrating the start of Pride Month, the embassy shared a photo of the rainbow-colored flag flying at the heart of the Catholic Church in Rome.

  • “LGBTQI+ rights are human rights,” the tweet said.

The Vatican has not publicly responded to the U.S. gesture.

  • But according to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “homosexual acts” are “acts of grave depravity” that are “intrinsically disordered” and “contrary to the natural law.

The context: The Biden administration last month authorized all U.S. diplomatic missions to fly the pride flag under the American banner — reversing the Trump administation’s effective ban on doing so and going beyond Obama-era LGBT diplomacy.

  • The State Department also gave blanket authorization for missions to fly the Black Lives Matter flag, while in both cases allowing diplomats to take into account local sensitivities.

The reaction: The online response to the U.S. display of Pride at the Vatican was overwhelmingly negative and led by conservative Catholic commentators.

“This is a profanation, a desecration. Lord, humble this filthy empire,” tweeted Sohrab Ahmari, the New York Post’s op-ed editor, reiterating his readiness for American decline.

Jay Richards, a business professor at the Catholic University of America, and others noted that U.S. diplomats have not appeared so willing to champion LGBT rights in Muslim countries.

  • “Are our embassies doing this in Saudi Arabia? Or do we just mock Catholics?” he asked on Twitter.

Rod Dreher, in an essay for The American Conservative, where he is a senior editor, condemned the U.S. for “trolling” the Vatican, saying the flag was an “outrageous insult to the Catholic Church, and it makes me embarrassed to be an American.”

  • But Dreher went on argue the move should be unsurprising given the liberal drift of both the Church’s leadership and many U.S. Catholics, including President Joe Biden.

Kathryn Jean Lopez similarly wrote in National Review: “The most dangerous threat to religious liberty on these neuralgic issues isn’t the Human Rights Campaign or Planned Parenthood …. It’s people who manipulate religion for these agendas and who pretend it’s one and the same with the Gospel.”

Also Tuesday, a bill that would prohibit any standard other than the American flag from flying at U.S. missions reached 20 cosponsors, mostly members of the right-wing Freedom Caucus.

By We'll Do It Live