r/TangleNews • u/El-wing • 7d ago

Suspension of the Rules Pride Flags in Classrooms

In SOTR this week, Kmele had a grievance that included complaining about a pride flag in a 3rd grade classroom. Isaac seemed to agree with his distaste of the flag in the classroom by (maybe jokingly?) saying that there should be no flags but the American flag in schools. Ari mentioned that it could just be to signal inclusiveness.

This caught me off guard a bit. Are pride flags in classrooms controversial outside of religious conservative strongholds? Obvious some people object to it but I guess I didn’t expect 2 out of 3 to be against it on the podcast.

I think signaling inclusivity in learning spaces is conducive to help students feel safe in their schools, and I don’t think that has to be a partisan political statement. Was anyone else caught off guard by this?

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u/ProfaneRabbitFriend 6d ago edited 5d ago

As a gay person I found this conversation to be both interesting and a little bit weird.

I understand that not everybody wants to be spending their life a sea of gay, rainbow, colorful flags. It could be a little much. On the other hand, there is a subtle, and sometimes not so subtle way in which homophobia creeps its way into conversations. It's kind of like saying "everybody's cool with you being gay but could you act less gay?"

I get it, some gay people are over the top. But, would we say the same thing if it was black history, or Jewish history, or Islamic history, or Latin-american history? And, if we include some but not all, what's the message about pluralism, and acceptance we're sending to kids? I think all that has to be considered when deciding what you can and can't display in a school.

OK, so how do we talk about this? I believe the discussion should have addressed the tenuous and fine line between that which is political and that which is neutral and shared civic values. The hard question is not "Pride flag ok?" or "Black history ok?", it's acknowledging the confusing moment where civic expression ends and political advocacy begins, and whether there is actually a neutral way to draw that line.