Things got absolutely entertaining in front of the House Foreign Affairs Committee during a hearing that was titled “Advancing National Security Through Public Diplomacy”, as Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL) pressed a State Department official over Biden-era grants for DEI programs all over the world, particularly in the context of her claim that the Biden Administration was “trying to make the maps more gay.”
The State Department official who was testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on the matter of DEI grants and “gay” maps was Sarah Rogers, the State Department’s 11th Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. She has served in the role since October 10, 2025
Rep. Mast, who is the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, was the one who broached the subject. He asked, “Can you tell me what is queering the map?” Under Secretary Rogers, responding, told Rep. Mast, of Biden-era State Department efforts, “So I think we were trying to make the maps more gay.”
Astounded, Rep. Mast asked how that was even possible, as a map is a map, not an expression of sexual or gender identity. Replying to her claim about what the Biden government was up to, the congressman asked, “Literally? How do you make a map more gay? Or gay at all?”
Rogers admitted that she had no real idea what that meant, though it was the stated objective of the Biden-era State Department. “I don’t know,” Rogers told the congressman. Continuing, she got in a snide remark about maps, saying, “Since the age of cartography, we’ve had pretty good maps, but maybe they weren’t gay enough.”
Continuing, Rogers then noted which countries were involved in the gay map-making initiative, saying, “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.”
Rep. Mast then went on to say that members of Congress have “real things” on which they should be working, such as Operation Epic Fury and the situation in the Middle East. He continued, “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.”
"*" indicates required fields
And, suggesting that some accountability might be coming, the congressman requested information from the State Department on who exactly was involved in what had happened, particularly from the perspective of who was cutting the checks and helping businesses and non-profits receive funding for such an obviously absurd and transgressive endeavor.
He said, on that point, to conclude the “gay maps” section of the hearing, “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.”
Watch him here:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video