Angry conservatives still smarting from the national movement against the Confederate flag are mounting an online campaign to ban the LGBT pride flag after Wednesday’s murder of two Virginia TV journalists.
They argue that because disgruntled employee turned murderer Vester Lee Flanagan was gay, the rainbow flag is now a symbol of hate, so it must be banned like the Confederate flag has been banned from most public and government property.
In a world devoid of history or logic, the proposition could make a certain kind of sense. After years of simmering quietly, the movement to ban the Confederate flag boiled over when white shooter Dylann Roof killed 9 parishioners at a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina earlier this summer.
Roof took many photos of himself brandishing weapons and symbols of white supremacy, including the battle flag of the secessionist slave states. The Confederate flag was deliberately coopted by anti-integration southerners in the 1960s as a white supremacist banner.
If one takes into account the staggering amount of violence that has been meted out on black bodies in the name of the values that flag represents, however, then weighs it against one deranged shooter who belonged to no organized movement, the nascent #TakeItDown movement among conservatives seems pretty much like the petty grudge-mongering tantrum that it is.
Let’s start with perennial self-declared victim Ben Shapiro:
David Ferguson is an editor at Raw Story. He was previously writer and radio producer in Athens, Georgia, hosting two shows for Georgia Public Broadcasting and blogging at Firedoglake.com and elsewhere. He is currently working on a book.
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Vindictive Confederate flag-loving conservatives call for ban on rainbow flag after Virginia shooting
27 Aug 2015 at 10:58 ET
Angry conservatives still smarting from the national movement against the Confederate flag are mounting an online campaign to ban the LGBT pride flag after Wednesday’s murder of two Virginia TV journalists.
They argue that because disgruntled employee turned murderer Vester Lee Flanagan was gay, the rainbow flag is now a symbol of hate, so it must be banned like the Confederate flag has been banned from most public and government property.
In a world devoid of history or logic, the proposition could make a certain kind of sense. After years of simmering quietly, the movement to ban the Confederate flag boiled over when white shooter Dylann Roof killed 9 parishioners at a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina earlier this summer.
Roof took many photos of himself brandishing weapons and symbols of white supremacy, including the battle flag of the secessionist slave states. The Confederate flag was deliberately coopted by anti-integration southerners in the 1960s as a white supremacist banner.
If one takes into account the staggering amount of violence that has been meted out on black bodies in the name of the values that flag represents, however, then weighs it against one deranged shooter who belonged to no organized movement, the nascent #TakeItDown movement among conservatives seems pretty much like the petty grudge-mongering tantrum that it is.
Let’s start with perennial self-declared victim Ben Shapiro:
The moaning quickly spread:
About the Author
David Ferguson is an editor at Raw Story. He was previously writer and radio producer in Athens, Georgia, hosting two shows for Georgia Public Broadcasting and blogging at Firedoglake.com and elsewhere. He is currently working on a book.New Stories
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