"The US Embassy to the Holy See celebrates #PrideMonth with the Pride flag on display during the month of June," the embassy tweeted from its official account.

"The United States respects the dignity and equality of LGBTQI+ people. LGBTQI+ rights are human rights."

Earlier this year, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that US embassies and consulates around the world could fly the "Pride" flag on the same flagpole as the American flag during "Pride season."

Under the Trump administration, US diplomatic outposts were reportedly prohibited from flying the rainbow flag from embassy flagpoles. They had to obtain special permission to do so and were only allowed to display the flag inside buildings.

The announcement has met with some resistance.

Representative Jeff Duncan, a Republican from South Carolina, said he "saw this coming."

Duncan called the US embassy's Vatican move "disrespectful" and "inappropriate".

It represents "exactly why I filed the Old Glory Only Act. The only flag flying at our embassies should be the flag of the United States of America," Duncan concluded.

Others who objected to the announcement noted that the flag's celebration of certain sexual activities would fly in the face of many local cultures where US Embassies ought to take a respectful, diplomatic posture.

Heritage Foundation foreign policy analyst Daniel Kochis, for instance, said that such "pushing" of "‘progressive' narratives often runs afoul of local religious or cultural sensitivities and will besmirch the US as an impartial interlocutor in many countries."

But Antony Blinken's cable on "Pride" flags advised that diplomatic posts in certain countries should avoid flying the rainbow flag if doing so would create a backlash.

President Joe Biden issued a statement on June 1 for "Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Pride Month, 2021."

"Pride is both a jubilant communal celebration of visibility and a personal celebration of self-worth and dignity," Biden stated.

Sources

• Catholic News Agency
• Catholic Vote

The Holy See's Congregation for Catholic Education says the document is intended to help guide Catholic contributions to the ongoing debate about human sexuality and to address the challenges that emerge from gender ideology.

Catholic schools must help parents teach young people that biological sex and gender are naturally fixed at birth and part of God's plan for creation, the Congregation says.

However the document, published during LGBT Pride Month, was immediately denounced by LGBT Catholics as contributing to bigotry and violence against gay and transgender people.

Gay advocacy group New Ways Ministry says the document, which rejects the idea that people can choose or change their genders and insists on the sexual "complementarity" of men and women to make babies, would further confuse individuals questioning their gender identity or sexual orientation and at risk of self-harm.

The Congregation rejects this idea, saying the Catholic Church and those proposing a looser definition of gender can find common ground.

It says common ground can be found in "a laudable desire to combat all expressions of unjust discrimination," in educating children to respect all people "in their peculiarity and difference," in respecting the "equal dignity of men and women" and in promoting respect for "the values of femininity."

While agreeing it's important to be very careful to respect and provide care for persons who "live situations of sexual indeterminacy," the document also points out that those who teach in the name of the Catholic Church must help young people understand that being created male and masculine or female and feminine is part of God's plan for them.

Those who see gender as a personal choice or discovery unconnected to biological sex are, in fact, promoting a vision of the human person that is "opposed to faith and right reason," the document says.

Not so, says Rev. James Martin, a Jesuit priest who wrote "Building a Bridge" - a book about improving Catholic Church outreach to the LGBT community.

"The real-life experiences of LGBT people seem entirely absent from this document."

"We should welcome the Congregation's call to dialogue and listening on gender, and I hope that conversation will now begin," he says.

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• PBS News Hour
• CNS
• AP
• The Guardian
• Vatican News
• Image:Crux Now