Simone Carter
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“Should Dallas fly Pride flag?” asked the Dallas Morning News’ opinion page first thing in the morning on July 1.
Maybe we woke up on the wrong side of the bed, but the article, 550 words contributed to the paper by Mangrove Investments Partner David J. Kohl, has been grinding our gears since we saw the headline.
Before we rage, a quick note about newsroom structuring. Kohl and any other contributor whose article is labeled “commentary” by the paper are not employees of The Dallas Morning News. The paper’s editorial board manages the opinion section, and that board is independent of the newsroom itself. So this is not us railing against the fine reporters at Dallas’ paper of record.
Our issue is with the questions and concerns posed by Mr. Kohl, and with whichever person on the editorial board decided it was a good idea to publish the piece. If the decision was made in the spirit of free speech, in an endeavor to ensure every opinion has the opportunity to be heard, fine. But we’re going to call the arguments brought forth in the article for what they are: total bullshit.
Kohl starts by noting that July 1 will be the first day in a month that City Hall does not fly the rainbow-striped flag emblazoned with a city crest that flies “every June.”
“As we elevate one community’s flag,” Kohl writes, “we must ask whether we are inadvertently creating division where we seek to foster unity.”
Must we?
The city of Dallas did not begin flying the municipal pride flag until 2020, when COVID-19 pandemic restrictions prevented the city from moving forward with other Pride-related traditions and recognitions for trailblazers in Dallas’ LGBTQ+ community.
A special-called meeting of the City Council on June 17, 2020, was dedicated to approving the annual flag raising. Just two days earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court had issued a landmark ruling that gave workplace anti-discrimination protections to gay, lesbian and transgender employees. The ruling was seen as a significant victory for LGBTQ+ advocates – council member Chad West said the decision gave him “a renewed hope” for the community – but it also showed that the rights of queer Americans are not something that were carved out in the past. They are being enshrined in our current decade.
The article notes that, outside of the pride, Texas and U.S. flags, the only other flag flown by the city of Dallas is a red, green and black Juneteenth flag, which is flown to honor the end of slavery in the United States. For Kohl, this isn’t easy to reckon with.
“If we fly a Pride flag in June, should we not also raise a flag for Asian American and Pacific Islander [Heritage] Month? What about groups celebrating St. Patrick’s Day or Indigenous Peoples’ Day?” he asks.
We, for one, have no objection to a city of Dallas St. Patrick’s Day flag. East Providence, Rhode Island, evidently, marks the holiday by flying the Irish flag while the mayor wears an oversized green bowtie. If anything, Dallas is significantly underutilizing the number of holidays it could cash in on for flag-raising ceremonies that see the mayor wearing a silly little getup.
We also can’t help but point out that the “what about everyone else’s flag?” argument tends to be made by the same middle-aged professionals who have for so long scoffed at the younger generations’ propensity for participation trophies.
In all seriousness, though, the idea that the pride flag and its symbolic nod to Dallas’ LGBTQ+ community excludes Dallasites in any meaningful way is preposterous. If anything, it’s a flag that invites inclusivity and intersectionality, as noted by former council member Omar Narvaez during the 2020 council meeting.
“The flag that we will be flying tomorrow has many colors, and the reason for that is the LGBT community spans across every single community that is here in the city of Dallas,” Narvaez said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re Black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American. It doesn’t matter if you’re male, if you’re female, if you’re an elder or if you’re young. The LGBT community encompasses every single person.”
Kohl points to Huntington Beach, California, a city that recently elected to ban the display of anything other than a few specific governmental flags on city property in a city election with a meager voter turnout. (Dan Kalmick, a council member who opposed the city charter amendment, told the Los Angeles Times that the measure was passed with the support of a right-leaning council majority, and that while the actual charter amendment said nothing of banning the Pride flag, he felt the ordinance was specifically intended to target the LGBTQ+ symbol.)
Kohl wrote that Huntington Beach’s decision “underscores the need for neutrality in public spaces.” However, this fundamentally misunderstands the values of many of the Dallasites the article purports to represent and the power dynamic that exists between the privileged and the oppressed when neutrality is strictly enforced.
Dallasites should not feel neutral about our city’s support for LGBTQ+ individuals. FBI data from 2023, the most recent year data is available, showed that across the U.S., hate crimes related to sexual orientation and gender identity bias rose 8.6% compared with the year prior. Incidents involving LGBTQ+ individuals accounted for more than one in five hate crimes, the FBI found, the third-most frequent group targeted across all hate crimes nationally.
That data is not something Dallas should feel neutral about. And while a flag is a small, albeit symbolic way to stand up against that hate and the systemic discrimination members of the LGBTQ+ community have historically faced, it should not be a symbol that feels threatening to anyone, regardless of their gender or sexual identity.
The opinion piece ends by claiming that symbols like pride flags give “ammunition to those partisan voices who will seek to divide us.” And maybe that’s somewhat true. Pride displays have certainly drawn the ire of some.
On Monday, Tarrant County GOP Chairman Bo French responded to the news that Fort Worth’s City Hall would be lit up in rainbow colors for the final day of Pride month by calling the display a promotion of “degeneracy” that represents “bigotry and hate.” (Yes, this is the same Bo French who last week tweeted an antisemitic and Islamophobic poll so offensive it led Republicans from across the state to call for his removal as chair.)
If French is the type of person alienated by Dallas’ flying of a pride flag, so be it. Good.
When these “partisan voices” seek to divide us, we have to stand against them in spite of their ammunition rather than strip them of it, because these are disingenuous people. Get rid of our Pride displays? Those voices will likely find something else to divide us on. We have to have a spine about this stuff and refuse to let the bullies like French win, especially in a time where only 50% of Americans believe that Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives are a good thing; especially in a time where the federal and state governments are taking swing after swing at those initiatives.
Returning to Kohl’s original question: Should Dallas fly the Pride flag?
Our answer is a thousand times yes. In many ways, it’s just a flag, and it doesn’t hurt anyone to let it fly. But it would hurt to take it down for a large swath of Dallas’ community. That decision would leave a scar that Dallas would have to reckon with for decades to come.
