As President Biden left the White House Wednesday to join other world leaders in France in commemorating the 80th Anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy, a Rainbow flag fluttered in the wind across Lafayette Park from the Executive Mansion, in front of the headquarters of his Department of Veterans Affairs, celebrating the VA’s fourth annual recognition of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ+) Pride Month.
Three years ago, Biden’s VA Secretary Denis McDonough mandated that all VA facilities, including hospitals and cemeteries, fly the LGBTQ+ Rainbow flag every year for June, in what he called “a celebration of a country and VA that has come a long way toward equity and equality.”
In a similar move, last year McDonough ended the VA’s longstanding use of President Abraham Lincoln’s famous words, “to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan,” as the department’s motto, or mission statement, and adopted in its place a new, gender-neutral version that he declared, “reflects that VA serves all of the heroes who have served our country, regardless of their race, gender, background, sexual orientation, religion, zip code or identity.”
The VA is just one example of how the federal government has become one of the biggest cheerleaders of the DEI movement on Biden’s watch.
In addition to rolling out marquee identity hires in his Cabinet and White House, Biden bragged early in his term, “On my first day in office, I signed [an Executive Order that] charged the Federal Government with advancing equity for all, including communities that have long been underserved, and addressing systemic racism in our Nation’s policies and programs.”
Among other actions, Biden established “the federal government’s first-ever Chief Diversity Officers Executive Council…as a coordinated effort to embed Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility principles across the federal government,” reminiscent of political commissars in the Soviet and Chinese militaries, at the same time that our own military suffers a historic decline in military recruitment on his watch.
As a proud American veteran who happens to be gay, I say it’s time to end this shopworn embrace of identity politics once and for all. The annual frenzy of rainbow flag waving for LBGTQ+ Pride month and other DEI displays at the VA on Biden’s watch has reached the point of self-parody and irrelevance, and it disrespects our nation’s veterans by implying that they are viewed through the prism of identity subgroups rather than as members of the same team.
Three decades ago, I had to mask my sexuality to serve my country in the Marine Corps, before the advent of “don't ask, don't tell,” and way before gay Americans were accepted entirely in the military, as is the case today. In my era, fit, professional, and upstanding Americans would be discharged from the Marine Corps and every other branch of service simply for being gay, and that was not only wrong, it was unpatriotic.
That was a different solar system from the one we live in today. The efforts of many leaders, lawmakers, and others -- gay and straight – have brought society in a few short decades to the point of complete impartiality on this incidental private, personal trait when it comes to military service, marriage, employment, and on every other societal front, and that’s a great thing. If anything, this progress has gone overboard in many cases, where being gay has become a plus in hiring or in college admissions, for example.
The best way to honor gay veterans would be to end Pride month and other identity pushes like removing Lincoln’s words from VA hospitals and cemeteries, recognizing that the decades-long battle for parity is already won and we are simply proud and patriotic veterans, full-stop.
It's time to fly the American flag, not an LGBTQ+ Rainbow flag, whether at VA facilities, in corporate America, in sports leagues, and in other areas of society. Let's get back to viewing each other simply as Americans, no matter our background, race, gender, or sexual orientation. In the words of President Obama twenty years ago, “There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America; there's the United States of America.”
Today, 80 years after the Normandy invasion, Obama would never get his Party's nomination with that refreshing message of unity. But we can return to this ideal by recognizing the strong state of parity across the board in America today and giving the heave-ho once and for all to LGBTQ+ Pride month and all other identity rituals at the VA and across the federal government. Our nation’s heroes deserve no less.
Mr. Ullyot is a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and former Assistant Secretary of Veterans Affairs and National Security Council spokesman.