Well, now it looks like we have a gay flag controversy, something Democrats are sure to make a 2020 campaign issue and the press reporting the whole thing is being done to be mean.

The State Department has rejected at least four requests from different U.S. embassies to fly LGBTQ pride flags during the month of June.

U.S. embassies in Israel, Germany, Brazil, and Latvia have each made requests to fly rainbow flags on the embassy’s flag pole, and the Trump administration has rejected each request, according to NBC News. Pride flags are still allowed to be displayed elsewhere in each facility.

Axios, citing NBC News, reports that the plan was to fly the rainbow flag either alongside the U.S. flag as its equal, or perhaps directly under it on the same pole.

Details: American embassies are still permitted to have rainbow flags on the premises, but not on the flagpole alongside the American flag, per NBC. The embassies in Israel, Germany, Brazil and Latvia are among the nations that have made the ask and been denied.

Not surprisingly, the press is screaming anti-gay hate bias by the Trump administration, in almost every report I've read has it:

Here's NBC News for one:

Although the pride flag can and is being flown elsewhere on embassy grounds, including inside embassies and on exterior walls, the decision not to allow it on the official flagpole stands in contrast to President Donald Trump's claim to be a leader in supporting LGBTQ rights overseas. Trump's administration has announced a campaign to decriminalize homosexuality overseas and this month issued a tweet and formal statement to "celebrate LGBT Pride Month and recognize the outstanding contributions LGBT people have made."

By the pinheaded logic of the big network, saying no to making the rainbow flag an equal to the U.S. one is evidence of hypocrisy and wickedness. Any idea put forward to highlight gay people, including equalizing the flag of the gay cause with the U.S. sovereign flag, needs to go through, or Trump is a gay-hater.

What goes unexplored in all this nonsense is that flying the rainbow flag as an equal to the U.S. flag isn't actually done protocol-wise.

It would actually signal a certain kind of favoritism to causes about which there is no complete consensus. It would also open the gate to a host of special interests demanding equal treatment without even being part of the government. If we can fly the gay flag alongside the American, why not the CAIR flag? As fine as the gay cause for human rights may be, it remains an idea, a transnational phenomenon, and not explicitly American. Putting the flag of a cause next to a flag of a sovereign would just equalize the state with activism. An armed forces flag would be appropriate to fly underneath the American flag. But a rainbow flag, or a CAIR flag, or a Black Panthers flag, or even a pro-life flag, would not. In making the gay flag an equal with the U.S. government, sovereignty would ultimately be reduced in importance, which would explain very well why President Obama was all in favor of it earlier. The flag on an embassy gate announces U.S. sovereignty and nobody's allowed to invade it. A rainbow flag signals ... an idea, one many people agree with, but which has no force of power the way the U.S. state which enforces those human rights does.

That's just too subtle for the press, so in they go for equating the official decline in permission to fly the gay flag as an equal to the American one at embassies, with anti-gay prejudice and policies. And pay no attention to the fact that the rainbow flag is being flown at other places with great visibility at the embassies, just not on the flagpole or alongside it as an equal.

What's forgotten here is that President Trump is the most gay-friendly elected leader in U.S. history. His top diplomat, the very competent Richard Grenell, U.S. ambassador to Germany, is gay. Grenell has spearheaded a global effort to decriminalize being gay, targeting stone-aged Muslim cultures and other backward hell-holes. Trump has been a supporter of gay marriage dating the 1990s. There's actually nothing he hasn't done to promote human rights for gay people, and he's tweeted his support for gay pride month, to boot. The media's claims about his stance on transgender troops as being proof of anti-gay bias are nonsense, his stance on that issue addresses military readiness and an issue of medication in foxholes, not hate for transgenders.

In short, it's a false issue, falsely reported, with fake news tactics. There's nothing to see here about this, protocol requires a sovereign American flag on U.S. installations abroad, because the flag is a statement of sovereignty, not a billboard, worthy or not, for any cause du jour.

Image credit: Ludovic Bertron, via Wikipedia // CC BY-SA 2.0