Florida Republicans, as a part of their ongoing hate marketing campaign towards the LGBTQ group, filed a invoice final month that might ban the show of Delight flags within the state’s municipal buildings. The proposed laws, from the very busy and necessary state Sen. Jay Collins from Hillsborough County and state Rep. David Borrero from Miami-Dade County, declares, “No different flag could also be uncovered to public view for exhibition or show, in any method, by a governmental company, native authorities, or unit of native authorities.”
Initially, the invoice restricted the flags permitted to fly on authorities property to the US, Florida, POW, and the Firefighter Memorial. You would possibly’ve seen that the Accomplice flag is absent on this listing, which places you one up on Borrero and Collins. Whoops!
Nonetheless, in an epic show of shamelessness, Republican state Sen. Jay Collins from Tampa filed an modification to the we actually hate the gays flag ban invoice. The exemptions, by this level, have been already as much as a half dozen. Earlier this month, Collins informed native media that his dumb-ass invoice “simply clearly strains up what flags may be flown over authorities amenities, just like the state flag, the American flag, the POW flag, and our firefighter’s flag.” He’d uncared for to say the white supremacist traitor flag.
Rightwing bigots have lengthy seethed with rage over the Delight flag’s defiant expression of pleasure. The Delight flag declares, “Do your worst. You will not make us go away.” The Accomplice flag has a much less storied historical past, as Normal Grant and my boy Sherman put these assholes down. The would-be Confederacy stays a menace, after all. You may argue it is consumed the trendy Republican Get together, however its flag expresses solely bitterness, resentment, and hate.
Wilton Manors, Florida, Commissioner Chris Caputo stated the Delight flag, which for now flies outdoors Metropolis Corridor, “tells me it’s a protected area. It tells me that I’m welcome right here and other people like me are welcome right here.”
He added, “It’s ladies’s historical past month if we wished to fly one thing for girls or breast most cancers consciousness month — prefer to not be capable to fly flags that categorical the values of our group — that is actually, it’s scary.”
However worry is the purpose. That is the twisted irony within the Accomplice flag’s inclusion on the permitted flags listing. The loser flag was resurrected in the course of the Civil Rights Motion and flown in opposition to integration. In a 2015 Tampa Bay Instances article, Sheila Grimes described the Accomplice flag, which nonetheless flew outdoors the Walton County Courthouse, as “malicious. It simply makes you tremble. It wants to come back down.”
Grimes vividly remembers what life was like, rising up black in Walton County within the Sixties, when the Accomplice flag flew outdoors Walton Excessive and the varsity band, with black and white members, performed Dixie at soccer video games. When colleges have been built-in, race riots broke out and the principal took down the flag.
The Accomplice flag was by no means about heritage. It was about asserting dominance over a marginalized group. But, it stays exempt from the metaphorical flag burnings.
Forbes experiences that final December, Miami-Dade County faculty board member Roberto Alonso proposed prohibiting the “show of flags that promote a political subject.” Alonso wasn’t excited about the Accomplice flag, which is hardly apolitical. His request got here shortly after Sarasota County Faculties had ordered Jeremy Baldwin, a instructor at Booker HIgh College, to take down a rainbow-colored “COEXIST” flag from his classroom. The flag had been in his classroom for years however, after Florida’s “Do not Say Homosexual” invoice handed, faculty officers all of the sudden claimed the “COEXIST” flag violated the rule towards political exercise on faculty grounds.
Queer existence is not a political debate. In the meantime, Florida nonetheless acknowledges Accomplice Memorial Day, Robert E. Lee’s birthday, and Jefferson Davis’s birthday as official state holidays. Florida Republicans proceed to decide on hate as a substitute of affection and acceptance.
[Forbes]
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