Congress Forced to Grill Bureaucrats About Gay Maps as Real Threats Loom

There’s a moment in every declining empire when the absurdity becomes so thick you can’t tell if you’re watching a tragedy or a farce. Last week gave us one of those moments.

Sarah Rogers, the State Department’s undersecretary for public diplomacy, sat before the House Foreign Affairs Committee and uttered words that should never appear in the same sentence: “We were trying to make the maps more gay.” Not a joke. Not satire. An actual government official explaining actual government spending under the Biden administration.

Rep. Brian Mast of Florida, serving as committee chair, did what any sane person would do. He asked her to clarify. “Literally? How do you make a map more gay? Or gay at all?”

Rogers, to her credit, seemed to grasp the ridiculousness of her own statement. “I don’t know,” she admitted. She went on to explain that maybe it involved Czechia and Slovakia, countries that probably didn’t ask for their cartography to receive a rainbow makeover. She referenced critical theory from her college days, acknowledging that some folks like to use “queer” as a verb. You know what? At least she was honest about the incoherence.

But here’s the thing that should make every American’s blood boil. This wasn’t some rogue program tucked away in a forgotten budget line. This represents a pattern of priorities so divorced from reality that it borders on dereliction of duty. While Iran poses an imminent threat to our interests and allies, while China expands its influence across the globe, while our own border remains a sieve, the State Department under Biden was funding DEI flash mobs in Kyrgyzstan.

Mast rattled off the list. Diversity roadshows in India. Inclusion programs in Luxembourg, Spain, New Zealand, Canada, and Malaysia. Training for trans and intersex leaders. A program about “non-binary and transfrancophones” studying linguistic attitudes in Montreal. Each grant represents money that could have gone toward actual diplomacy, actual security, actual American interests.

The defenders of this nonsense will say it’s about soft power, about winning hearts and minds. They’ll claim that cultural diplomacy matters. Fine. Cultural diplomacy does matter. But there’s a difference between showcasing American values and funding academic exercises that most Americans find baffling at best and offensive at worst.

Traditional American values that once defined our diplomatic efforts included freedom, opportunity, and the rule of law. Those are universal aspirations that resonate across cultures. They’re what made America a beacon. But somewhere along the way, the bureaucracy decided that exporting critical theory and gender ideology was more important than defending liberty or promoting free markets.

This is what happens when government grows beyond any reasonable constraint. When agencies answer to no one, they fund everything. The State Department isn’t supposed to be an NGO pushing social experiments. It exists to advance American interests abroad, to keep us safe, to build alliances that matter when threats emerge.

Mast called it embarrassing. That’s generous. It’s infuriating. Every dollar spent on making maps gayer is a dollar not spent on countering actual threats. It’s a signal to our adversaries that we’re not serious people anymore. Can you imagine Chinese or Russian diplomats sitting in meetings about gay cartography? They’re not. They’re planning, strategizing, advancing their interests while we debate pronouns and fund flash mobs.

The federal government doesn’t have unlimited resources, despite what the spending suggests. Choices matter. Priorities reveal character. When your priority is queering maps instead of countering Iran, you’ve lost the plot entirely.

Rogers seemed almost sheepish about the whole thing, which suggests even she knows how this looks. But the real question isn’t about one official or one hearing. It’s about a system that allowed this to happen in the first place. How many layers of bureaucracy signed off on these grants? How many people thought this was a good use of taxpayer money?

Americans work hard, pay their taxes, and expect their government to focus on things that matter. National security matters. Economic prosperity matters. Protecting our interests abroad matters. Gay maps in Slovakia? That doesn’t make the list.