In Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s quest to nix all diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) content, some photos on the Pentagon’s website and online posts appear to be marked for deletion just because they include the word “gay”—regardless of what the context is.
One such case, the Associated Press reported, is a photograph of the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber that dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, in August 1945. In the picture, pilot Col. Paul Tibbets Jr. poses in front of the plane, which was named after his mother, Enola Gay Tibbets.
Another photo that seems to have been mistakenly flagged is the headshot of Marine Corps Sgt. Maj. A.C. Gay. Other such photos show Army Corps of Engineer workers, one of whom also has the last name Gay.
ADVERTISEMENT
In total, 26,000 images have been flagged, according to the AP, though one official told the outlet that that number could reach 100,000 when considering social media posts and other websites. This person added that it’s unclear whether the database of flagged images is final.
Much of the material that does fall under Hegseth’s initiative celebrates heritage or relates to contributions to the military by women and minorities.
The overly broad net cast by the Defense Department is similar to what the Trump administration did last month to the Internal Revenue Service.
While trying to root out any potential DEI references in the Internal Revenue Manuals, unrelated content was deleted, like references to the “inclusion” of a taxpayer’s identification number on a form.
At the time, MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow described the move as “willy-nilly control-F deleting anything” textually linked to DEI.
