Maryland School Board Bans Display Of LGBTQ Pride Flags On School Property

[Tigerace117]

People who have thoughts of same sex attraction have never had unequal rights in America. You would have to show a single law that ever existed that codified this alleged inequality

But even that aside, the idea of egalitarianism is itself a political idea.

You HAVE to be kidding. Gay people were routinely thrown into prison on blatantly unjustified charges for literally centuries.

 

[Slyfox696]

These are not serious good faith arguments.

You having no good response to facts doesn't make them bad faith. It just means your position in the debate should be seriously re-evaluated.

 

[Slyfox696]

You HAVE to be kidding. Gay people were routinely thrown into prison on blatantly unjustified charges for literally centuries.

I'm sure you'll be shocked to know that our comrade's argument isn't that they were thrown in prison for being gay, but only for acting gay. Thus, it cannot be argued the laws were against gays.

And when I say "you'll be shocked to know", what I really mean is "you won't be at all surprised by the same tired homophobic rhetoric we've been hearing for decades".

 

[Tigerace117]

It’s not like that at all. The fight was brought to the south. Like Ukraine with Russia, the South gave the much better armed Union all it could handle. They went down swinging for sure. There is pride in defeat

Wrong as usual. The South started the war by attacking US soldiers on US government property. They “went down swinging” desperately trying to continue buying and selling other human beings....which is EXPLICITLY what they were fighting for.

 

[Tigerace117]

The rainbow, it’s not a normal flag. It represents the dark side of our society.

Only in the minds of raving bigots.

 

[Nomad4Ever]

State rights your CRT education is showing

A states right to what

 

[dockside]

State rights your CRT education is showing

Yeah, State rights to have slaves. Can you tell us of any other "right" the South wanted to protect that was endangered?

 

[Slyfox696]

Yeah, State rights to have slaves. Can you tell us of any other "right" the South wanted to protect that was endangered?

Easy. The states' rights to preserve their economic way of life.

Please just don't ask me what kind of economy they were seeking to protect.

 

[LostInSeattle]

There’s everything wrong with celebrating a regime which explicitly went to war to protect slavery. You not being able to comprehend that says a lot about you....none of it good.

The CSA killed more Americans than the USSR and PRC put TOGETHER.

Right?! No one would think of putting up a statue in their town of General Giap or Rommel, but sure let's have statues of Lee and Jackson. If we don't celebrate the Tories during the Revolution War - say, Benedict Arnold - then why would we celebrate other American generals who led troops against American soldiers? Just think how crazy that is...

And, most of these Civil War statues, monuments etc. were put in the early 20th century to make a public statement to reinforce Jim Crow. wtf?

 

[LostInSeattle]

Homosexuals have never been subjected to unequal treatment.

Sooooo, laws against homosexual acts or gay marriage or homosexuals serving in the military - those don't constitute unequal treatment? If not, then please share with us the equivalent laws governing heterosexuals.

 

[LostInSeattle]

The rainbow, it’s not a normal flag. It represents the dark side of our society.

Ok that made laugh. First time I've heard a rainbow described as the dark side of anything, except maybe God's wrath...

 

[LostInSeattle]

It’s not like that at all. The fight was brought to the south. Like Ukraine with Russia, the South gave the much better armed Union all it could handle. They went down swinging for sure. There is pride in defeat

Mmmm, I seem to recall the South throwing the first punch in that brouhaha. The CSA seceeded, then opened fire on Fort Sumter before the Union did anything.

 

[LostInSeattle]

I have no problems with a Nazi flag, Karen

The murdered members of the Jewish half of my family would like to ask you, WHY THE **** NOT?

 

[LostInSeattle]

One of the dads in the video talked about not confusing tolerance with acceptance. My wife and I have been discussing this distinction. I'm not clear how these differ in this context. What do you all think?

 

[NotreDame]

Part 1
Pickering and Tinker both clearly state teachers do not give up their 1st Amendment rights merely by working as a government employee. This is not debatable.

PART 1

I just said your logic, which is that the school just has to say they don't support political speech in order to ban it,

And here’s your problem, that has never been my argument. You read my posts as well as you read the decisions, incorrectly, inaccurately, and without attention to the qualifying wording of the argument/view point.

Dispense with the Strawman above.

Then I noticed what, at best, appeared to be poorly decided editing of Supreme Court opinion…

And you are wrong, precisely because you are not paying careful attention to the qualifying wording of the decisions.
Let’s start with Pickering.

You said,
“For example, here is Pickering:

‘“In sum, we hold that, in a case such as this, absent proof of false statements knowingly or recklessly made by him,[6] a teacher’s exercise of his right to speak on issues of public importance may not furnish the basis for his dismissal from public employment.’”

Your flaw? The teacher in Pickering, when speaking/wrote the letter, wasn’t acting in their official capacity as a public school teacher or government employee but as a citizen!

From Pickering: “The problem in any case is to arrive at a balance between the interests of the teacher, as a citizen, in commenting upon matters of public concern and the interest of the State, as an employer, in promoting the efficiency of the public services it performs through its employees.”

That’s the legal and factual issue decided by the Court. Pickering involved government employees who engaged in speech as a “citizen,” as opposed to engaging in speech while in they in their capacity as government employee. That is the distinction you miss in Pickering. The distinction of a “citizen” in which the public school teacher wasn’t on the clock as a public school teacher and wasn’t enaged in any official public school teacher duties, functions, actions, and when he wrote the letter.

Pickering was speaking as a citizen, as a member of the society, not a teacher, when he wrote the letter.

“However, in a case such as the present one, in which the fact of employment is only tangentially and insubstantially involved in the subject matter of the public communication made by a teacher, we conclude that it is necessary to regard the teacher as the member of the general public he seeks to be.”

The above makes very good sense since, after all, Pickering, when he wrote the letter, wasn’t working as a government employee, he wasn’t working as a public school teacher. Hence, when he wrote the letter he was a “citizen” a “member of the general public.”

The Supreme Court has since interpreted Pickering to distinguish between a government employee speaking and a government employee speaking but not speaking while and as a government employee, i.e., a citizen.

“Pickering provides a useful starting point in explaining the Court’s doctrine. There the relevant speech was a teacher’s letter to a local newspaper addressing issues including the funding policies of his school board. 391 U. S., at 566. “The problem in any case,” the Court stated, “is to arrive at a balance between the interests of the teacher, as a citizen, in commenting upon matters of public concern and the interest of the State, as an employer, in promoting the efficiency of the public services it performs through its employees.” Justice Kennedy, majority opinion, Garcett v Ceballos.

Kennedy went on to observe about Pickering, “Pickering and the cases decided in its wake identify two inquiries to guide interpretation of the constitutional protections accorded to public employee speech. The first requires determining whether the employee spoke as a citizen on a matter of public concern. See id., at 568. If the answer is no, the employee has no First Amendment cause of action based on his or her employer’s reaction to the speech.”

Where public employee is speaking while in their official capacity as a public employee, then the “employee has no First amendment cause of action based on his employer’s reaction to the speech.”

The problem is with your inaccurate reading of the decisions, specifically failing to recognize the specific wording framing the decisions, wording such as speech of a “citizen” that is analytically and legally different from speech of a government employee speaking while in their official capacity as a government employee.

 

[NotreDame]

Part 1
So the problem here is you don't seem to know what you're replying to. I don't believe I've made any judgment on whether the school's action here was in violation of the 1st Amendment. Go back and read what I challenged. I challenged your idea that the school can simply say we don't want political speech and that is the end of it. And you were wrong about that.

Part 2

Now, the reason Pickering and Garcetti are relevant to my argument is because my argument has been A.) the school district is the government as speaker B.) the school district is determining what the government shall not say C) the school district may do so without implicating the speech clause since D) the district policy is applicable to government speech, and not private speech or citizen speech and E) this applies to teachers and other public school staff when they are acting in their official capacity and duties as a employee of the public school.

That is and has been my argument, explicitly stated to you previously.

So the problem here is you don't seem to know what you're replying to.

Let’s be clear, you initiated by responding to my argument.

Next, the argument of mine you sought to address was a specific argument that you did not correctly comprehend.

. I challenged your idea that the school can simply say we don't want political speech and that is the end of it. And you were wrong about that.

“The problem here is you do not know what you’re replying to” as the above isn’t and hasn’t ever been my argument or idea.

So, review, you read my posts, do not arrive at a correct understanding of my argument, in which you espouse a reply to a fictional argument, thereby rendering your posts irrelevant to my POV.

My god man, I was clear in post number 88.
Post in thread 'Maryland School Board Bans Display Of LGBTQ Pride Flags On School Property'
https://debatepolitics.com/threads/...ags-on-school-property.483419/post-1076100328

I couldn’t have made my argument any more clear with phrases such as:

1.”the prohibition is in regards to government speech, the notion of government as speaker…
2. “This is government speech…”
3. “The government as speaker can, consistent with the 1st Amendment free speech clause, refuse to speak, express a message, and forbid a specific message as speaker.”
4. “when what is involved is government speech…”

So, once again, my argument is 1.) the district prohibition regulates government speech and in the capacity of the government as speaker 2) the government as speaker can decide what isn’t to be said by the government/as the government and doesn’t violate the speech clause when doing so 3) this applies to government employees when they are acting in their capacity as a government employee 4.) this applies to public school teachers when acting in their capacity as a public school teacher since public school teachers are government employees 5) this district prohibition doesn’t apply to students or public school teachers when they aren’t acting in their official capacity as a public school teacher but instead as a citizen. ***6) The government as speaker then may logically discriminate between speech, forbidding certain kinds of speech by the government but allowing other kinds of speech.**

Picketing, Garcetti, Pleasant Grove, support the above and the above is derived from the case law.

The legal doctrine is known as the Government as Speaker.

The public school district is the government, and as the government deciding how the government (public schools and their employees) may not speak while they are acting in their capacity as public school employees.

That’s been my argument and remains my argument. You’ve apparently never grasped my argument thus far.

 

[Slyfox696]

And here’s your problem, that has never been my argument.

This is literally the first post of yours I replied to.

The school has said they do not want to express a political message....Hence, the school doesn’t want to raise, display, or hang either one on the basis a political message is displayed.

This doesn’t, based on the present information, violate the 1st amendment.

If your argument was not "the school doesn't want to express a political message so it's okay to ban it", then you did a VERY poor job of explaining your argument.

That’s the legal and factual issue decided by the Court. Pickering involved government employees who engaged in speech as a “citizen,” as opposed to engaging in speech while in they in their capacity as government employee. That is the distinction you miss in Pickering. The distinction of a “citizen” in which the public school teacher wasn’t on the clock as a public school teacher

And as was said in Tinker, teachers don't lose their 1st Amendment rights merely by walking through the doors.

We've covered this already. You're wrong. So either come up with something new or stop wasting our time.

Where public employee is speaking while in their official capacity as a public employee

Again, walking through the doors of the school does not automatically deprive one of 1st Amendment rights. Your argument is resting entirely on a premise already dismissed. I don't cease being an American citizen just because I've walked into the building of my employer. That's asinine.

If I am actively instructing, then I agree that may be different (but, again, perhaps only to a point depending on evidence it disrupts the learning environment, as has been repeatedly stated...for example, I feel pretty comfortable saying the school could not force me to say all Jewish people deserved to be exterminated in the Holocaust). But merely by gaining employment and being inside the doors of my employer does not deprive me of my status as a citizen.

Your entire premise is illogical.

The problem is with your inaccurate reading of the decisions

No, the problem is you clearly don't know what you're talking about and rather than admitting you were wrong in the first place are now grasping at straws. The very idea a government employee ceases to become a citizen with the right to speak on political issues merely by walking into a building is ridiculous.

Over and over again, in case after case, including the Garcetti case you cited, it has to be decided if the speech interferes with the job. In the case of a teacher, does it disrupt the learning environment. A school simply saying "they do not want to express a political message" is not enough to ban speech. This is not debatable.

Let’s be clear, you initiated by responding to my argument.

Yes, the one where you explicitly stated the school can ban political speech simply because they want to. Which is not correct.

Next, the argument of mine you sought to address was a specific argument that you did not correctly comprehend.

I used your exact words. If you feel there was a misunderstanding, then perhaps not use the exact words you used?

“The problem here is you do not know what you’re replying to” as the above isn’t and hasn’t ever been my argument or idea.

The school has said they do not want to express a political message. ...Hence, the school doesn’t want to raise, display, or hang either one on the basis a political message is displayed.

This doesn’t, based on the present information, violate the 1st amendment.

I mean, I can keep quoting your words back at you if you want.

So, review, you read my posts, do not arrive at a correct understanding of my argument

This is called projection because you spent the first few of your posts in reply to me by defending the school in this specific circumstance, which was never my point.

Just because you misunderstood my argument does not mean I did not accurately respond to the words you have written. Again, if there was a misunderstanding, don't use the exact words you used.

 

[Glitch]

Carroll County school board voted to ban the display of political flags, including LGBTQ pride flags, on school property. The policy would only affect the school buildings themselves. Students will still be allowed to display pride flags on their person.

Some teachers and parents expressed concern about the pride flag being displayed inside some county classrooms.

"We can be accepting of each person’s sexuality and personal identification. But what I will not accept is over-sexualizing the classroom." said one parent.

Confederate flags and Nazi flags were already prohibited.

source: https://nbc25news.com/news/nation-w...sey-confederate-nazi-flags-already-prohibited

The bigger question is why any flag - other than the State or US flags - were being flown at all?

Public schools are not forums for political speech. Only the official flags of the State and the nation should ever be flown over any State public building, and only the US flag should be flown over federal buildings. Anything else is unacceptable.

 

[Slyfox696]

Public schools are not forums for political speech.

LOL.

Not even close to being true. Just as one example...I don't know how other states do it, but in Missouri, the local Board of Education is ultimately responsible for all final decisions for the school (employment, curriculum, graduation, finances, etc.). The Board is comprised only of individuals from the community who won their election. Literally the school is overseen by elected political officials.

 

[j brown's body]

The bigger question is why any flag - other than the State or US flags - were being flown at all?

Public schools are not forums for political speech. Only the official flags of the State and the nation should ever be flown over any State public building, and only the US flag should be flown over federal buildings. Anything else is unacceptable.

What makes equality political? It's one of our founding principles.

Teachers fly the rainbow flag to show support for gay students who are frequently bullied.

 

[Slyfox696]

What makes equality political?

Nothing.

It's one of our founding principles.

Well, no, it's not actually. It should have been, but it clearly was not.

 

[Glitch]

What makes equality political? It's one of our founding principles.

Teachers fly the rainbow flag to show support for gay students who are frequently bullied.

The purpose of public schools is to educate. Not to be used to advocate for someone's personal agenda. It not only violates Title 4 of the US Code, it establishes a precedent to allow anyone and everyone to now use public schools to advocate for their personal agenda. If public schools, or any public building allowed foreign flags to be flown to advocate a particular political agenda, then they cannot refuse others who seek the same thing.

Which means that next there will be NAZI, Confederate, and KKK flags flying over the schools. Under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment you can't prevent it. If you allow "Pride" flags to be flown over any public building, then you must allow all flags to be flown over government buildings for an equal duration, or be sued into oblivion for violating the rights of every American.

 

[Slyfox696]

The purpose of public schools is to educate.

Like, say...educating children that there are different people in the world and we shouldn't condemn someone for being different?

Not to be used to advocate for someone's personal agenda.

This comment is rooted in so much ignorance of educational history.

It not only violates Title 4 of the US Code, it establishes a precedent to allow anyone and everyone to now use public schools to advocate for their personal agenda.

Because that NEVER happened ever before, right?

If public schools, or any public building allowed foreign flags to be flown to advocate a particular political agenda, then they cannot refuse others who seek the same thing.

You mean...like freedom of expression?

Which means that next there will be NAZI, Confederate, and KKK flags flying over the schools.

Great point

 

[Glitch]

Like, say...educating children that there are different people in the world and we shouldn't condemn someone for being different?

This comment is rooted in so much ignorance of educational history.

Because that NEVER happened ever before, right?

You mean...like freedom of expression?

Great point

BLM and ANTIFA thought it was okay to violate the law in order to spew their political agenda, and now they are domestic terrorists. I would rather not have my public institutions deliberately violate the law, and those who do violate the law I want to be held accountable. Anyone who raises a foreign flag over a public building should at the very least be fined, and prison time is not unreasonable.

 

[Slyfox696]

BLM and ANTIFA thought it was okay to violate the law in order to spew their political agenda, and now they are domestic terrorists.

What in the hell are you talking about and what does it have to do with education?

I would rather not have my public institutions deliberately violate the law

A school displaying a flag does not violate the law. Trust me on this.

and those who do violate the law I want to be held accountable.

....good?

Anyone who raises a foreign flag over a public building should at the very least be fined, and prison time is not unreasonable.

Do you even know where you are right now? Your post has very little to do with my post responding to your other post.

You claimed school isn't about pushing a personal agenda and I laughed at you because of how utterly ignorant you are to how education works and has historically worked. You said the purpose of school should be to educate to which I agreed...which means school should teach that different people are different and we shouldn't condemn people simply for being different.

Now do you have anything of substance to add?