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Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla., questioned a State Department official last week over Biden-era grants for DEI programs around the world amid her claim that former President Joe Biden's administration was "trying to make the maps more gay."
Sarah Rogers, the State Department's undersecretary for public diplomacy, was testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Committee in a hearing titled: "Advancing National Security Through Public Diplomacy."
"Can you tell me what is queering the map?" asked Mast, who serves as chair of the committee.
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"So I think we were trying to make the maps more gay," said Rogers, referencing Biden administration efforts.
"Literally? How do you make a map more gay? Or gay at all?" Mast replied.
"I don't know," admitted Rogers. "Since the age of cartography, we've had pretty good maps, but maybe they weren't gay enough. I also took critical theory in college, and I think sometimes people use 'queer' as a verb. I do understand that the maps we were trying to make gay were, I think, of Czechia and Slovakia. So maybe those countries asked for it. I doubt it, but I don't know."
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Mast noted that lawmakers have "real things" to work on in Congress, like the "imminent threat of Iran."
"It is embarrassing that we have to talk about the fact that things like this were funded non-binary and transfranophones, linguistic attitudes and ideologies toward inclusive French in Montreal, Canada," he said.
Other grants were for a DEI flash mob in Kyrgyzstan, a diversity roadshow in India, diversity and inclusion programs in Luxembourg, Spain, New Zealand, Canada, and Malaysia, teaching trans and intersex leaders in India," said Mast.
"We would absolutely love to know the individuals specifically who were busy writing these grants, because they have no business receiving another paycheck from the people of the United States of America," he concluded.
