GOP lawmakers seek to ban Pride flags, stirring tensions with liberal cities

Yahoo

05-05-2025

A Pride flag flies in front of Boise City Hall, just blocks from the Idaho Capitol. The flag flies below the city's own banner and in April shared the flagpole with a flag honoring organ donation. The city also displays the U.S. flag, a POW/MIA flag and a state of Idaho flag. (Erika Bolstad/Stateline)
BOISE, Idaho — The day the flag bill came up for a vote in the Idaho Senate this spring, state Sen. Melissa Wintrow had no plans to speak against it. As the top Democratic leader in her chamber, she had already spent the legislative session in constant, vocal opposition to the Republican-dominated legislative agenda.
'I thought: 'Oh, this stupid flag bill once again,'' Wintrow said. 'I'll just vote 'no' quietly because I've just really been in people's grille about things.'
But then the bill's sponsor, Republican state Sen. Ben Toews, began passing out flyers about the legislation, one of two proposed bills to limit which flags can be flown at schools and on state and local government property. The only photos on the handout were of rainbow-striped Pride flags flying in Boise: one on a flagpole in front of City Hall, and then others on light poles along Harrison Boulevard, two blocks from Wintrow's home.
'When he sat that picture in front of me on that desk, I thought: 'That's enough. Just always picking and bullying,'' Wintrow said. 'The state's going to tell us what to do, when they can't even address the larger problems like affordable housing? That's what's on people's minds. A good working wage, health care. It's as if they don't know how to govern. So they just pick these culture war things.'
In recent weeks, both Idaho and Utah have enacted bans that prohibit Pride flags from being displayed on government property, pitting lawmakers in the Republican-dominated legislatures against the more progressive capitals of Boise and Salt Lake City, where the flags are often flown at city hall.
It's as if they don't know how to govern. So they just pick these culture war things.
– Idaho Democratic state Sen. Melissa Wintrow
In Utah, the law allows the state flag, the U.S. flag, U.S. military flags, the POW/MIA flag, local government flags, tribal nation flags, university and school flags and Olympic flags. Idaho's list is similar, but includes a provision in the school flag law that prohibits flags with political viewpoints, 'including but not limited to flags or banners regarding a political party, race, sexual orientation, gender, or a political ideology.'
Lawmakers in Florida, Texas and at least 13 other states are considering similar flag prohibitions, said Logan Casey, director of policy research with the Movement Advancement Project, which studies LGBTQ+ rights. The flag bills go beyond symbolism, Casey said. Rather, they are part of a broad and coordinated legislative attack on LGBTQ+ people that seeks to strip them of rights and erase or make difficult their participation in public life.
'Sometimes those attacks are very material, like denying access to health care or the ability to participate safely in public life and activities,' Casey said. 'Sometimes they're a little more symbolic, like these flag bills.'
The rainbow-colored Pride flag was conjured up by artist and drag queen Gilbert Baker in 1978, at the suggestion of San Francisco politician Harvey Milk, as a symbol of progress and pride for that year's San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade. Since then, the rainbow-colored flag and its many design iterations have grown into worldwide emblems of solidarity with LGBTQ+ rights.
Although the laws in Idaho and Utah don't ban Pride flags specifically, bill sponsors and their supporters made it clear they want to see such flags removed from city halls, schools and state buildings. Idaho state Rep. Ted Hill, a Republican who sponsored the bill limiting which flags can fly at schools, said in an interview that Pride flags are disruptive to classroom learning because discussion about them takes up 'an amazing amount of political bandwidth.'
'The best way to do it is to get rid of everything,' said Hill, who represents Eagle, a suburb northwest of Boise. 'So the only thing you have in the classroom is the American flag, the state flag. And people will say inclusivity and all this. Well, the American flag is as inclusive as it can get.'
Despite the new law, Boise Mayor Lauren McLean, a Democrat, continues to fly a Pride flag in front of City Hall, just below the city's own and adjacent to poles flying the U.S. and state of Idaho flags. The Pride flag's presence, within view of the state Capitol, elicited a sternly worded letter from Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador, a Republican.
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Idaho's law, which went into effect April 3, has no penalty for local governments or officials who fly flags in defiance of the ban, an oversight lawmakers told Labrador they'll rectify in subsequent legislative sessions. Instead, the law relies on 'the good will of elected officials for its enforcement,' Labrador wrote, warning McLean that she should 'comply with the law out of a sense of duty to your oath of office.'
He threatened, too, that lawmakers could 'deny state tax revenues and other appropriations to the City of Boise or any other governmental entity that does not follow state law.'
McLean countered that the new law is unconstitutional, and that the city will challenge threats to withhold funding. Pride flags have flown in Boise for a decade, she told Labrador, and represent a commitment to 'a safe and welcoming city where everyone means just that — everyone.'
'The Constitutional rights of our residents are not subject to — cannot be subject to — the political whims of legislative disapproval,' McLean wrote, 'and we will not step back from them simply because the principles our community cherishes make some in state government uncomfortable.'
Boise's city council is considering a resolution confirming that any flags it flies, including Pride flags, are official city flags — a move the council says will ensure it is complying with state law. In the meantime, the city will 'continue to fly the flags on City Hall Plaza that represent our community and speak to our values of caring for people and welcoming all,' McLean said in a statement.
Early on Easter morning, several people climbed a ladder propped up next to the city's flagpole to cover the Pride flag and a separate flag (honoring organ and tissue donation) with trash bags. They also raised the Appeal to Heaven flag, a Revolutionary War-era flag that has come to represent sympathy to the Christian nationalist movement and to President Donald Trump's false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. A few hours later, the mayor lowered the flags, which are on a locked halyard, to remove the trash bags and the Appeal to Heaven flag.
It capped a challenging sequence of events in Boise and nearby Meridian, which drew national attention this spring when school officials ordered a middle school teacher to take down a sign with the phrase 'Everyone is welcome here' from her classroom. Amid the backlash, people in Boise printed T-shirts and yard signs in support of the teacher and the sign's message.
The mayor's response to the flag law and the support for the classroom message aren't directly connected, but both reflect how many in the community insist on sending a welcoming message at this moment in American history, said Christina Bruce-Bennion, executive director of Boise's Wassmuth Center for Human Rights, which helped coordinate support for the teacher.
In Salt Lake City, the flag ban threatens to end a long-standing annual tradition. Typically, the mayor's office kicks off Pride Month festivities in June with a flag-raising ceremony at City Hall, said Chad Call, executive director of the Utah Pride Center, which puts on the state's annual Pride festivities. Events include a parade through the streets of Salt Lake City with a 200-foot Pride flag — which remains a legal form of First Amendment expression and has taken place most years since 1997.
'We have a city council that wants to celebrate Pride month,' Call said. 'They want to celebrate the queer community in the month of June. And then we have a state government that does not want that happening in our capital city. And so it is very targeted.'
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One of the flag bill's sponsors, state Rep. Trevor Lee, said in an interview that his legislation was prompted by constituents who told him they're 'sick and tired of seeing a political agenda being pushed in their face' on government property, particularly with flags featuring transgender representation.
'It makes people feel uncomfortable if it's something they don't agree with,' said Lee, who represents a district north of Salt Lake City. 'And so we're trying to keep it very specific and let schools focus on teaching the things that they need to, and let government buildings just fly their city flag for heaven's sakes, or the state flag or the American flag.'
One Utah parent, Republican activist Aaron Bullen, said he began objecting to Pride flags several years ago after one of his children, then a fifth grader, was 'visibly upset' after school one day. Bullen said his son told him he'd seen what's known as a Progress Pride flag, a newer iteration of the original rainbow-striped flag. It includes an arrow on the left side composed of pink, blue and white stripes to represent transgender people, as well as brown and black stripes to represent queer people of color. The flag was in the school's computer lab.
Bullen said he complained to school leaders at the district, south of Salt Lake City, and the flag came down. But Bullen felt as though the flag's presence undermined what he and his wife teach at home and model to their children as members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, particularly how they interpret the church's stance on transgender people and marriage for same-sex couples.
'It says, basically, 'we approve of gay marriage' when that flag is up,' Bullen said. 'And that's something that my religion is explicitly against. And so you have a teacher of my son, a person in authority that they'd like to be able to trust and to follow the instructions of, but they're saying, 'your parents who taught you this other thing, they're wrong. Your religion is wrong.' That's what that flag means.'
It's not the job of a school to try to teach morals differently than parents would.
– Aaron Bullen, a Utah parent and Republican activist
He added: 'It's not the job of a school to try to teach morals differently than parents would. Parents have the fundamental right and responsibility to rear their children. And it's not a school's place to oppose the religion of the parents or the teachings of the parents.'
Unlike in Idaho, Utah's flag ban carries a $500 fine per day for failure to comply with the law. But in Utah, the law took effect without Republican Gov. Spencer Cox's signature. The governor declined to sign the bill into law, saying the state's residents are 'tired of culture war bills that don't solve the problems they intend to fix.'
Call, of the Utah Pride Center, said that while it's discouraging for LGBTQ+ people to witness their representation further erased in public spaces, they refuse in Utah to allow the flag law to diminish the spirit of their Pride events, among the largest in the nation.
'Our counterculture here is really, really strong,' Call said. 'And I think the thing that probably defines our Utah Pride as being kind of unique is the incredibly strong community that it brings together. There's tens, hundreds of thousands of people that come out to support it.'
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