“The U.S. Department of State has awarded more than $20,000 for a cultural center in Ecuador to host ‘drag theater performances’ in the name of diversity and inclusion,” reports Fox News. Prior to the Biden administration, the State Department did not fund overseas drag shows. But now it does:
The State Department awarded a $20,600 grant on Sept. 23 to the Centro Ecuatoriano Norteamericano (CEN), a non-profit organization supported by the U.S. Embassy and Consulate in Ecuador, to “promote diversity and inclusion” in the region.
The project at CEN, which started Sept. 30 and runs until Aug. 31, 2023, will include “3 workshops,” “12 drag theater performances,” and a “2-minute documentary,” according to the State Department’s grant listed on the USASpending.gov website.
The grant to CEN is part of the State Department’s public diplomacy program, which seeks to “support the achievement of U.S. foreign policy goals and objectives, advance national interests, and enhance national security by informing and influencing foreign publics and by expanding and strengthening the relationship between the people and government of the United States and citizens of the rest of the world,” the website states.
This will make America look ridiculous in the eyes of some Ecuadorians, undermining our foreign policy aims. A doctor who sometimes travels to Ecuador said, “Why don’t they fund schools, sustainable infrastructure and food production? My friend’s family is from Ecuador and they live in a hut like structure with dirt floors & can’t afford to send their kids to school. Wtf are these priorities??”
Being tone-deaf is not new for the State Department. Under the Obama administration, the State Department funded repulsive “modern art” displays in Afghanistan (depicting things like toilets) that offended ordinary Afghans. The U.S. did things in Afghanistan that backfired and made many Afghans even more opposed to women’s rights, in a society where women’s status is very low. “Do-gooders established a ‘National Masculinity Alliance’, so a few hundred Afghan men could talk about their ‘gender roles’ and ‘examine male attitudes that are harmful to women.’” “According to a USAID observer, the gender ideology included in American aid routinely caused rebellions out in the provinces, directly causing the instability America was supposedly fighting.” U.S. obsessions with things like imposing parliamentary gender quotas distracted Afghan attention from more popular and useful goals like teaching girls to read and write, which the Taliban opposed but ordinary Afghans tended to support. (Ordinary Afghans are less repressive toward women than the Taliban. In the 1970s, women in Afghanistan’s cities usually did not wear Burkas and enjoyed substantial freedom, unlike today under the Taliban.).
