Utah GOP Lawmaker Pushes Bill That Bans Pride Flags While Allowing Nazi Flags To Be Displayed

Policy

from the hasty-and-bitter-walkback-ensues dept

Utah state Rep. Trevor Lee is not going to like this headline. Too bad. It’s accurate, even if he’d like to pretend it isn’t.

Trevor Lee is again pushing a bill that would ban government agencies from displaying pride flags, but would allow Nazi and Confederate flags to be displayed in classrooms, so long as they are part of the so-called educational experience.

This bill originally only targeted schools, but the first amending of the bill expanded its coverage to all government entities, state and local. Here’s the Salt Lake Tribune’s original reporting that managed to anger Rep. Lee so much he demanded a retraction:

The bill, HB77, originally applied only to schools. But an update to the bill released ahead of Thursday’s House Education Committee hearing expands the ban to all government buildings or property. The updated bill was favorably recommended by the committee, with the committee’s two Democrats — Reps. Sahara Hayes and Carol Moss — casting the only “nays.” It will now be heard on the full House floor.

Approved flags for display in government buildings and schools would include the Utah state and U.S. flags, military flags, flags for other countries, flags for Native American tribes and official flags for colleges and universities. The bill also allows for the flying of a “historic version of a flag … that is temporarily displayed for educational purposes,” which Lee, R-Layton, said would include the Confederate and Nazi flags.

Shortly after this was published, the bill was amended to make it exactly as bad as Trevor Lee’s defense of his original bill in its un-amended form. While this was happening, Rep. Lee was going after the Salt Lake City Tribune, claiming it was spreading lies by publishing direct quotes of things he said while trying to push his bill forward.

Here’s what Rep. Lee said when talking about his bill:

 “There are instances where in classrooms, you have curriculum that is needed to use flags such as World War II, Civil War,” he said. “You may have a Nazi flag. You may have a Confederate flag, and so you are allowed to display those flags for the purpose of those lesson plans if it’s part of the curriculum, and that is okay.”

And here’s what he said after the Tribune posted its report with a headline that said (completely truthfully) that the bill would ban displays of the pride flag in schools but allow the display of Nazi and Confederate flags.

In an interview that night, Lee denied that he ever said there would be instances where a teacher could “display” a Nazi flag, and expressed displeasure that The Tribune would publish his testimony about displaying Nazi and Confederate flags in classrooms.

“There is a difference between displaying flags in curriculum when you’re teaching on them,” he said. “You don’t censor history here. That’s not what we’re doing.” When asked to further explain his remarks, Lee hung up the phone.

Well, a pride flag is also a historical flag, but there appears to be no exception specifically written into the law to allow its use “in curriculum.” And when Lee’s extended explanation was [checks notes] hanging up the phone, it’s completely fair to categorize the bill as a ban on pride flags, while allowing exceptions for symbols of hate, provided any teacher with the temerity to insist the only way to teach history is to display these symbols of hate in their classrooms, rather than just rely on depictions contained in textbooks or presentations.

Hanging up on Tribune reporters wasn’t enough for Rep. Lee. He insisted on having the last, insipidly incoherent, word.

Asked Friday morning about the amended bill, Lee commented only on the headline of the previous story on his bill. “Redact your ridiculous headline,” he wrote in a text message, before adding that The Tribune should “apologize for sowing divide and spreading hate to the general public.”

Sowing divide and spreading hate is pretty much Rep. Lee’s day job. The representative prefers the reporting of another Utah News source, touting its article on the preferred platform for sowing divide and spreading hate: xTwitter.

That report, written by Brigham Tomco, contains this headline, which might be the only thing Rep. Lee read before directing his ExTwitter followers to this article:

A ban on MAGA and Pride flags? GOP lawmakers say yes for cities, counties and classrooms

While it’s true the bill would (perhaps accidentally) forbid displaying the MAGA flag, there was literally no one mentioning their opposition to government workers displaying MAGA flags. That might be because no government employee has. It also might be that several have done this but no “concerned citizen” has bothered to complain about it during comment periods.

In fact, the only incident described in public testimony about the law is something that probably never happened, at least not in the way it’s described here.

Two years ago, Lehi resident Aaron Bullen’s 10-year-old son came home upset from elementary school because a rainbow flag had been placed in his computer lab, he told the committee.

The rainbow, or pride, flag, which represents LGBTQ acceptance, was taken down after a complaint was made to the principal, but it temporarily allowed the school to promote a symbol that was offensive to his son, Bullen said.

“This message conflicts with my family’s religious beliefs. It tells my son that his faith, his parents and his values are wrong,” Bullen said. “That is not neutrality; that is religious discrimination at a public institution.”

Aaron Bullen is a ridiculous person and is telling a ridiculous story. I cannot imagine a ten-year-old coming home distraught because they saw a flag in a classroom. I can certainly imagine them mentioning it and their parents getting all shitty about it because of their own ingrained bigotry. And a flag does not “conflict” with “religious beliefs,” no matter what’s on it. You still get to keep your religious beliefs. No flag can take that away from you. And calling it “religious discrimination” is especially stupid and inadvertently hilarious because, as far as I can tell, sexual orientation is not a religion.

For all of Rep. Lee’s claims that this is about preventing the display of “divisive” flags (which may include MAGA flags), the real point of this bill is exactly how it’s described in the Tribune article that turned Lee into a corncob. He has admitted as much on ExTwitter:

If you can’t see the embed, it says:

My bill specifies which flags can be displayed in classrooms. It would ban Pride flags from schools. Parents could sue the school district if it’s violated.

His private ExTwitter account (which was public until journalists started digging into his hateful posts during his election run) is even worse than his official one. A long article detailing his social media activity shows Rep. Lee spent years using anti-LGBTQ+ slurs, insulting the looks of female politicians and judges he didn’t agree with, spreading 2020 election conspiracies, and engaging with others as an avid supporter of a Latter Day Saints splinter group that advocates against the perceived “wokeness” of the religion’s current leadership.

So, when Lee says (before acting like yelling and hanging up on people is some form of rebuttal) he will outlaw pride flags but provide exceptions for Nazi and Confederate flags, it’s best to take him at his word. And if he doesn’t like the headlines it generates, maybe he should do something to stop generating them… like dropping the bill or just not being the sort of asshole who prefers Nazi flags to rainbows.

Filed Under: censorship, flag ban, trevor lee, utah