The United States Embassy to the Holy See today has a rainbow flag to mark Gay Pride month:

The obvious question, which I’ve seen plenty ask on social media, is if they will be doing the same in Saudi Arabia. How about in Iran? I don’t love the Holy See being compared to those, but you get the idea. It would be an insult. The Swiss Guard isn’t going to charge the embassy, which is in Italy, not within the Vatican borders, but come on.

The most dangerous threat to religious liberty on these neuralgic issues isn’t the Human Rights Campaign or Planned Parenthood (and, by the way, I was just outside the one in lower Manhattan, and there’s a rainbow flag in one of the windows). It’s people who manipulate religion for these agendas and who pretend it’s one and the same with the Gospel. It’s again a bad comparison, but I recoil when people try to tell me where the flat tax is the Bible (it’s happened). Jesus tells us to love, but not to get caught up in all kinds of confusions that hurt people, and innocent children.

And yes, I know the people in the Catholic Church are far from perfect. There has been evil done and I’ve also seen a few rainbow flags, among other things in my time. But we all know what the Church teaches. And she should be free to. And people shouldn’t be intimidated for believing something that was a mainstream Democratic Party belief until quite recently. And that makes some sense. That’s not hate. That’s a different opinion about, yes, an issue quite intimate to people’s lives. We used to have arguments, and sit down with one another over dinner all the same, and the like.

I was in the the new Moynihan Train Hall in Manhattan on Friday. It’s dangerous to get nostalgic, but where are the days of Daniel Patrick Moynihan? He would go on Firing Line and talk with Bill Buckley.

And, about pride. . . . According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, it’s still a deadly (capital) sin. So maybe not a pride flag on the embassy to the Holy See? Wouldn’t that be a decent think to do?