Under Secretary of State apologizes to Czechia, Slovakia for Biden admin 'queering' their maps

Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Sarah B. Rogers on Friday apologized to Czechia and Slovakia for the Biden administration "queering" the countries' maps.

"Czechia and Slovakia are great countries. I'm sorry that my predecessors 'queered' your maps!" Rogers posted on X on Friday, sharing a clip of her discussing the matter before the House Foreign Affairs Committee. "This is why future public diplomacy grants will be streamlined, accountable — and channeled toward real American interests, like free speech and sports diplomacy."

During the hearing before the panel on Thursday, House Foreign Affairs Committee Brian Mast asked Rogers, "Can you tell me, what is 'queering' the map?"

"So I think we were trying to make the maps more gay," Rogers responded.

"Literally?" Mast asked.

"Well, I don't know," Rogers said.

"How do you make a map more gay? Or gay at all?" Mast asked.

"You know, since the age of cartography, we've had pretty good maps, but maybe they weren't gay enough. So, I know — also, I took critical theory in college. I think sometimes people use 'queer' as a verb. I do understand that the maps that 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," Rogers said.

"We do have real things to work on in Congress, like what's going on with the imminent threat of Iran, and it is embarrassing that we have to talk about the fact that things like this were funded — nonbinary and trans francophones, linguistic attitudes and ideologies towards inclusive French in Montreal, Canada — these things," Mast said.

"I'm going to give you a list of these, and any of these that you can provide me the receipt for — the Facebook link to where they wanted to take photos of how they were doing a DEIA flash mob in 'Karigastan' — you know, whatever documentation they have of all of these things, we would love to see that. And would absolutely love to know the individuals specifically that were busy writing these grants, because they have no business receiving another paycheck from the people of the United States of America," Mast added.