Flag laws ban the wrong things

More than a dozen states invite conflict unnecessarily

A politician should seek to avoid unnecessary conflict, which is accomplished by siding with policy that neither targets or favors a particular group or cause. And this is where 13 states that have proposed flag bans have gotten their policies hopelessly wrong. These laws invite conflict and without solving the underlying problem.

Photo by Sara Rampazzo on Unsplash

The policies (both enacted in some states and pending in others) don’t specifically say so, but they are intended to prohibit the pride flag, specifically, because it is a symbol of a sexuality, demographic, and/or lifestyle. Meanwhile, the policies allow for flags that have earned political favor, namely POW/MIA flags, and more broadly flags of foreign countries, universities, or school mascots. So, they aren’t content-neutral. They favor some speech but not others.

With these flag ban statutes, both sides are wrong. The folks that want a city, county, state, or school district to celebrate “pride” with a flag are wrong because that suggests, wrongly, that it is the role of government to pick a group to get behind.

The proponents of flag bans are wrong because their bans aren’t actually bans at all but actually the government endorsement of what is acceptable when it comes to the display of flags. And these bans are exclusively about flags, which also misses the point.

A far superior approach would have looked at the issue from the standpoint of government’s singular role, which is to protect life, liberty, and property. For a city, that’s a fairly boring job: making sure the police come when you call, that the fire department shows up when a building is on fire and making sure water flows when the tap is turned.

So, every expenditure, every action, every function should be tied to this mission. Anything outside that role should be disallowed. When government can do only those things that are in service of the mission, there is no room for a city government to, for example, dedicate a moment of time to choosing which flags to fly or spend money promoting an ideology of any kind — whether the pride, confederate, or MAGA flag. None is part of the mission.

Such a policy would exclude the POW/MIA flag. Content neutrality is the goal. A cause may be worthy, but it isn’t the function of government to back causes. Such a policy framework permanently avoids conflict that comes with a government decision to take a side.

“We’d love to promote X, Y, or Z,” the mayor might say, “but that’s not what the city government is here to do.”

Such a policy should extend beyond flags. There would be no place for a city to spend time promoting gay pride month, but also it wouldn’t expend time promoting Father’s Day either. This is OK, because it frees the government to focus on the thing it was organized to do, which is to provide specific services to the constituency of a town, and that’s it. This also removes a vector for conflict because when government is constrained by its boring mission, there’s less to argue over.

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