In 2021, Huntington Beach, California’s city council voted unanimously to fly the Pride flag on city property.
What a difference two years makes.
From the Sacramento Bee:
A California city that first voted in 2021 to celebrate Pride by flying the Pride flag during the month of June reversed course, calling the flag “divisive.”…
Dozens of people spoke at the council meeting, the majority of them against the Pride flag ban, the Los Angeles Times reported.
One woman wouldn’t give her name but identified herself as a Christian and agreed the flag is divisive, the LA Times reported.
Squeaking by in a 4-3 vote. If anyone was being “divisive”, it was newly elected councilmember Pat Burns for even suggesting getting rid of the Pride flag.
However, “divisive” is a word right-wing people love to use. Trump was called a “uniter” in 2016, whereas Hillary and progressives were being “divisive”. Not a civil rights movement (not that the conservatives of the 1960s didn’t say the same thing), Black Lives Matter was derided from day one as “divisive”. Any movement centering people of color? Divisive.
What is unity then? Concentration on the concerns of the dominant group. White people and White concerns, hetero people and hetero concerns, as those are the concerns “shared by all Americans”. Talk of racism and its effects? Divisive. Gas prices? Uniting.
Of course part of this stems from discomfort some right-wing hetero people, White people, and other people in dominant groups have when discussing the oppression they’re complicit in. Or when they want to feel good about themselves while engaging in discrimination. Ms. Christian above certainly sees her homophobic views as legitimate, so why bring “gay stuff” to the forefront? Why “bring it up”? (Also, why continue a subject where one is automatically not the center of the conversation?)
It’s a sad day when the feelings of bigots are respected more than those of minorities. Homophobia is simply not a legitimate viewpoint — and the extent to which we entertain flat earth should be the extent such hate is entertained. The only people who feel that equality is “divisive” are those who oppose it.
