GOP Rep Wants to Ban Pride Flags at Embassies

A Republican congressman has introduced a bill aimed at keeping U.S. embassies from flying the LGBT Pride flag.

U.S. Rep. Jeff Duncan of South Carolina last week introduced House Resolution 6450, the Old Glory Only Act, which would prohibit all of the nation's diplomatic and consular posts from displaying any flag other than the U.S. flag.

"The United States flag is the single greatest symbol of freedom the world has ever known, and there's no reason for anything but Old Glory to be flying over our embassies and posts around the globe," Duncan said in a statement issued to the Washington Examiner, a conservative site.

The motivation for the bill, however, was the display of the rainbow Pride flag at some U.S. embassies, including the one in Israel in 2014, in Jamaica in 2016 (after the Pulse nightclub massacre), and Belize this year, the Examiner reports.

Duncan, first elected to Congress in 2010, has a string of low scores on the Human Rights Campaign's Congressional Scorecard -- in his three full terms so far, zeroes for two terms and a 30 for another. He has received endorsements from the anti-LGBT Family Research Council's political action committee.

His bill has 26 cosponsors, all Republicans. It has yet to be referred to a committee.