Getting flag bans wrong, again

It just keeps the conflict going

I’m amused that everything I have said about the Idaho Legislature’s attempts to ban gay pride flags has proven true; the Legislature passed its second iteration of the flag ban, intended to stop the city of Boise from emoting government support for gay, bisexual, and transgender people, only to find out that the city found the obvious-marked-in-neon-lights legal loophole and walked right through it.

As predicted, the city switched messaging mediums, going from flags to window clings, demonstrated on video by Boise Mayor Lauren McLean on Thursday.

Here was my warning on this matter last year, after the Legislature passed Flag Ban 1 last year and the city of Boise dodged it by making a Pride Flag an official city flag:

If lawmakers had paused to consider potential legislation from the narrow lens of the proper role of government, they would have recognized that the debate isn’t over the display of a flag, but rather public resources being used to give special favor, visibility, or preference to a particular group or the government sanctioning of beliefs or ideas. If lawmakers had done that, they would have recognized that the issue is not about flags at all, and they would have written legislation that prohibits government resources being used to provide any group with favoritism of any kind, be it via a flag, t-shirt, TV show, or whatever; be it gay couples or military members lost in the theater of combat. Government should not have favorites, and government should not be engaged in any activities outside its scope of responsibilities.

So while the window cling is clever and unexpected, the fact that the city would shift gears and try something else once Flag Ban 2 was signed into law isn’t. And I think legislators expected it, too.

So if they knew this would happen, why didn’t they tackle the broader issue?

Because banning flags and allowing the McLean to respond gives both sides another year to wage the culture war in the Statehouse and at City Hall. Another chance for lawmakers to use fear with more conservative voters to say “look what we’re doing to stop the degeneracy at the leftist Boise City Hall.” And it provides another year for McLean to do her thing, again using fear, to virtue signal with voters who find her message appealing.

Both lawmakers and McLean are counting on you to continue to fight with one another, regardless of what side of the political spectrum you find yourself. And this is the part that annoys me.

If you are new here, consider the following paragraphs that I wrote last year:

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.

In government, the expectation is that your money is going to be used for the essential services that it would be impossible to provide yourself. That is, things like fire trucks and water systems — the relatively boring things for which you pay money to a government entity — city, county, or fire district — to facilitate.

Promoting a sexual orientation falls outside the scope of government. I can do this myself, whether it is showing support for heterosexuals, homosexuals, or both. I don’t need a mayor or county commissioner or state legislator to use my money to buy things to accomplish this task.

And if my neighbor doesn’t like my purchase or my message, he has no complaint because I used my money to do it. But if I were to use his money to accomplish this — or if I were to take money from him by force in order to promote a sexual preference, a club, or a cause — he would have a legitimate complaint.

So therefore, the mere existence of the fight between state and local officials is predicated on the false notion that this is the proper territory for government to engage in, that the real grievance is not the existence of Pride materials at City Hall but the city’s choice to use taxpayer funds to operate outside the scope of responsibilities.

The complaint would be the same whether the city chose to promote gay couples or cat ownership. Doubtful, though, that the latter would prompt legislative action because, generally speaking, people aren’t afraid of cats such that they want government to do something about them.

The active ingredient in all of this fear, and the government necessity to perpetuate conflict. We should stop rewarding politicians for keeping us in this loop.