Some Don’t Rally Around the Pride Flag

by

John J. Dunphy

This column appeared in the 6–22–19 edition of The Telegraph of Alton, IL. It has never appeared on line….until now. Read it and share it. Our fight against bigotry must be relentless.

• On a recent episode of the Jim Bakker Show, Mike Jacobs praised Donald Trump because “He listens to godly counsel. Who ever would have thought that we would have a president who so surrounds himself with godly counsel?” Perhaps one of Trump’s godly counselors advised him not to allow American embassies fly the Pride flag during June, which is Pride Month.
• “During the Obama administration,” according to NBC News, “the government granted blanket permission to embassies overseas to fly the Pride flag during June.” This year, however, the Trump administration told embassies they must request approval to fly the flag. Sounds reasonable, doesn’t it? Well, the catch is that no approvals were granted.
• The Donald’s decision pleased his conservative Christian supporters. “I want to thank President Donald J. Trump and Secretary Mike Pompeo for making the decision not to fly the gay flag over our embassies during June in recognition of gay pride month,” Franklin Graham stated on Facebook. “The gay pride flag is offensive to Christians and millions of other people of faith, not only in this country but around the world.”
• By asserting that “the gay pride flag is offensive to Christians,” Graham implied that all Christians without exception recoil in horror from the rainbow flag. That is hardly the case. The web site of the United Church of Christ notes that “it has become common practice for the congregations [of that denomination] that do vote to become Open and Affirming to display a rainbow flag somewhere on their property” because it’s “a shorthand way of saying ‘All are welcome here.’ “
• The web site of the Episcopal Church states,“To our lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender brothers, sisters and siblings: The Episcopal Church welcomes you!” The Living Lutheran web site of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) affirms that during Pride month “many ELCA congregations pay special attention to issues around sexual orientation and gender identity.” The photo at the top of this page features a church steeple with a rainbow flag flying in the foreground. United Methodist congregations that have become part of that denomination’s Reconciling Ministries Network proudly display the rainbow flag.
• Graham maintained that this flag is offensive to non-Christians as well. It certainly doesn’t offend Reform Jews, who underscore that “We are guided by the very basic belief that all human beings are created as it says in Genesis 1:27.” That verse states that humans were created in the image of God. “We oppose discrimination against against all,” Rabbi David Saperstein wrote, “for the stamp of the Divine is present in each and every one of us.”
• Nonetheless, the rainbow flag disturbs a great many “people of faith,” as Graham called them. I should like to ask these persons a question. Are you aware that, at our border, children are being forcibly separated from their parents?
• “Inside an old warehouse in South Texas,” the AP reported, “hundreds of children wait in a series of cages created by metal fencing. One cage had twenty children inside.” The trauma these children are undergoing will haunt them for the rest of their lives. If you don’t believe me, perhaps you’ll believe the testimony of Yoka Verdoner, a Dutch Jew who survived World War II. “We children were sent into hiding, with foster families who risked arrest and death by taking us in.” She states that “the lasting damage inflicted by that separation [from their parents] reverberates to this day, decades hence.”
• Verdoner identifies with the incarcerated children at our border. “The events occurring now…make me weep and gnash my teeth with sadness and rage. I know what they’re going through.”
• Most of you surely will agree that anyone who obsesses over the flying of a rainbow flag while ignoring these horrors being perpetrated by our government has distorted priorities.
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• John J. Dunphy is the author of “Abolitionism and the Civil War in Southwestern Illinois” and “Unsung Heroes of the Dachau Trials: The Investigative Work of the U.S. Army 7708 War Crimes Group, 1945–
• 1947.”