DEI ON STEROIDS! In California, a Major General in the National Guard hanging a “Gay as Fuck” flag in his office gets him a promotion

Especially, I presume, because he is not gay.

Free Beacon California’s top military commander, tasked with safeguarding the state from wildfires and other natural disasters, displayed a profane gay pride flag in his office just weeks before Gov. Gavin Newsom appointed him to lead the California National Guard in 2022, according to a photo obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

Major General Matt Beevers featured a flag that read “Gay as Fuck” in his office at the California National Guard’s headquarters in Sacramento, a photo taken inside his office shows. Newsom appointed Beevers, a married heterosexual man, to lead the Guard one month after the photo was taken. The flag was displayed in Beevers’s office for several months before a servicemember of the California National Guard took the photo, the servicemember told the Free Beacon.

Former California National Guard officers who served under Beevers said the vulgar display—and his other actions in office—raise serious questions about whether his focus on “woke DEI priorities” over operational excellence has hampered the Guard’s ability to properly respond to natural disasters including the deadly Los Angeles fires earlier this month.

That includes Beevers’s decision to dismantle a highly trained volunteer firefighting force under his command just months before the outbreak of the Los Angeles fires, a move that rendered the Guard incapable of sending a complete firefighting force to the city until 10 days after the fires broke out, the Free Beacon reported.

Newsom appointed Beevers acting head of the California National Guard in August 2022 following years of what critics describe as performative woke virtue signaling from the military commander. In 2014, as Beevers served as deputy adjutant general of the Guard, he participated in a “Walk a Mile in Her Shoes” event in Sacramento, where Beevers was pictured wearing what appeared to be black flats and carrying pink high heels.

The Newsom appointee has also been a mainstay in California gay pride events since before the pandemic, participating in pride parades across the state in his capacity as a general of the National Guard every year from2018 through 2022.

As a major general of the National Guard, Beevers reports to the National Guard Bureau in Arlington, Virginia, which now falls under the command of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. (Oh, this should be fun)

Former high ranking officials at the California National Guard who served under the embattled commander said it was inappropriate for the senior military officer to feature the profane display in his office. “That’s so inappropriate. I don’t even have the words,” said retired Col. Michael Wise, a decorated combat veteran after retiring from the California National Guard in 2018, after viewing the photo. “I’ve never seen anything like that in 34 years in the military. Why would a general officer post that in his office? That shows at the very, very basic level a complete lack of judgment.”

Wise said Beevers’s prioritization of woke virtue signaling over operational efficiency tarnished his reputation among the rank-and-file warfighters of the California National Guard, particularly his decision in 2019 to openly defy President Donald Trump’s executive order banning transgender individuals from joining the military.

“The rank-and-file strongly disagreed, to say the least, with his views on transgenders,” Wise said. “Particularly the war fighters. The infantry guys, the special forces guys, the guys who are going to be out there on the front lines.”

Another retired colonel of the California National Guard, John Haramalis, said Beevers is overly focused on “woke DEI priorities” at the expense of safeguarding Californian citizens. “That’s led to nothing but problems,” Haramalis, who retired from the Guard in 2017 and later served as president of the National Guard Association, told the Free Beacon. “If you’re going to lead the military and your priority is woke DEI, your military is going to collapse.”

Beevers, who has faced accusations of referring to his Jewish subordinates as “kike lawyers,” dismantled a certified volunteer firefighting force known as Team Blaze not long after the Democratic governor appointed him to lead the California National Guard in August 2022. But Beevers did not replace the firefighting capabilities that Team Blaze provided the Guard, which meant it had to train 200 new firefighters from scratch after the Los Angeles fires broke out on Jan. 7. Those freshly trained firefighters arrived in the city 10 days later on Jan. 17, the Free Beacon reported.