Hi, everyone, Welcome back to the nonprofits. So now for our next
article, we are going to Michigan Hamtrammac, Michigan to be exact where the
Michigan City bands pride flags and other symbols on city property. This article comes
front comes to us from m Alive, written by Matt Dirt. Do you
r R? On June fourteenth of twenty twenty three. Now, what happened
was is that? Um? I think it was last Tuesday. Um,
the Hamtrack City kind of voted unastionally to ban pride flax and other symbols that
could be flown on city hall and other state property. Now you might be
saying to yourself, so why would they ban the trap the pride flag?
You know it's Pride and month. You know, you know there should be
pride flax everywhere. Let's celebrate diversity. Well, can do that in Hamtrack.
Can do it? You know why? Because it is promoting an agenda
that has nothing to do with the state legislator. Now you would think that,
okay, that makes sense. But if the mayor hadn't run on an
anti lgbt Q plus platform, maybe this would it have happened. And I
like to point out. I bet there's queer people working in government and Hamtrack,
Michigan that would like to be, you know, known that they're included
in a part of you know, their town, and that they are and
they are a welcome member within their society. So we're going to move to
the panel, and I'm sure that my wonderful UM co hosts have more to
say, So s R. I would like to hear your opinion on this.
Yeah, So this is this is a very interesting story to me,
UM, and I hope we I hope we include the the other article that
Kelly got for us, because when Kelly had thoughts on the last articles journalism
that we had talked about the last time we were together, I have my
thoughts on this one as well. So it from this article alone, it's
a little confusing to me as to why they would say it's banning the Pride
flag. It very much seems to be as if they're trying to do exactly
the thing that a lot of secularists asks, right, they say, hey,
if you put up a Christian thing, then you either got to put
up a Muslim thing and a Satanist thing or nothing. Um, but Kelly,
you've been following this a little bit more as this is kind of closer
to home to you. So why why is that not exactly the case with
Yeah, that is exactly not the case with this. The City Hall of
ham Trammick did actually once fly a Pride flag. They threw one for Pride
months and the current mayor, who is a Muslim, I'm gonna I'm gonna
get to that later, he ran and made this one of the main things
of his campaign that there was no longer going to be any Pride flags flown
at city Hall or and we're over any other government property. And when they
brought this with the city that he brought it to the city council, the
city council agreed, and that's when they realized the legal ramifications of it,
that they couldn't just ban the Pride flag, they had to ban all the
flags. So just to ban one flag, they decided to ban them all.
And that's the way that turned out, Helen. Do you want to
take it? Oh, I'm sorry, Raphael. Yeah, it's interesting.
Um, they definitely, I don't know who's the smart one in planning these
things. They definitely knew what they were doing. Like you said, Kelly,
it's like ban it all, just just destroy you know, every flag
known to man except for like there are a few exceptions that they included.
So I don't know. It's the more I looked into this city, which
I'm not going to try to say, the more it was it was very
interesting for me that was like a Muslim majority city, the only one in
the United States at least according to Wikipedia. So it's like it there seems
to be a trend towards what they're trying to get done in this little city.
And I to me, it's a problem because, like Helen said in
the beginning, it's like it's not taking care of the minorities. You know,
it's like there's a majority of this religion or whatever, and that's who
they're playing too. They're not you know, I'm sure there are lgbt QI
people there. I'm sure there's other religious people there, and you know,
it's kind of just being you know, those people are not being considered,
and that's that would be my problem with bills like this. But I will,
like I said, I guess I'm not totally against it. If we're
going to ban everything, it's hard for me to argue on some levels of
that, Helen, she got so to kind of piggyback off of that.
I would be actually all for this if he has said, you know,
we're you know, to make sure everything's equal under the law. We're going
to just fly you know, the American flag, you know, and the
state capital flag or whatever it was, you know, but instead decided to
make it a point to be to be a bigot against queer people, and
that was one of the points of his campaign, which gives me. So
the settlers to me is like, well, yes, I think that all
things should be equal under the law. You know, like, as far
as private property goes, you can fly whatever you want, even if it's
like a Confederate flag. I might hate it. I might think you're terrible.
You have the right to fly it on Stay property. I'm like,
yeah, just keep it to Stay symbols, you know, the American flag.
I'm fine. But the fact that he used his bigger tree to run
run this idea through the council and to give votes and through his legend to
his constituence. It worked. And this is the type of thing too,
when people use laws, especially that are it's a bigger tree. Laughed wrapped
in freedom's clothing, you know, and he's trying to make it about like,
no, I'm trying to I'm going to try to be completely legal under
the law, but really it's a target minorities, which is very, very
disgusting. So I just call you got word. Yeah, he First off,
I want to tell everybody don't think of Michigan as ham trammic just it's
not. Michigan has come a long way since the last election. We've been
passing a lot of really awesome laws, Really progressive things have been happening in
Michigan. So we we have we just reelected our first lesbian Attorney general.
So she's and she was reelected and she's awesome. So don't think of Michigan
as being real backwards because we are fighting back against this stuff here. But
one of the problems I had with this law, and I still am really
up in the air about it, what would happen. It says specifically you
can't fly it on a city flagpole. So I'm wondering if you brought your
own flagpole. Like let's say I was a member of the VFW and we're
having our local picnic at the city park and we bring our own flagpole and
fly a VFW flag, which would be illegal according to this law. Would
it be okay because we brought our own flagpole, I'm wondering about that,
or or would the city just kind of turn a blind eye to you know,
it's the VFW. They're okay. But then if we had a Pride
get together at the city park and brought our own flagpole, would they turn
a blind eye to a Pride flag? Then? I'm not sure that they
would. I'm really not so. Um, I don't know. I don't
know where to go with the law. It's kind of really funky to me.
Sor you want to add something to it, Yeah, I do.
I do think it is. I think it's odd, honestly. Um.
Again, when I when I initially came across this story, one of the
first things that stood out to me was that Flint, Michigan, had had
also enacted a law very similar to this, if not exactly the same,
just a handful of years ago. Um. And I don't remember hearing much
at the time, although I sure could have and then and just it's just
that we're living in more or less dystopian hellscape right now. So it's just
always just bad stuff. But um, this, it seems it does seem
odd to me. I think if you're trying to come at this from a
purely legalistic, you know, standpoint, what it what it technically bands is
any religious, ethnic, racial, political, or sexual sexual orientation group flags.
And that's odd to me because I don't think of each of those groups
as the same, right I just if because if it was, if it
was all, if it just said hey, no religious symbols of any kind,
well it's like, okay, well that that includes all the different types
of religion and out there. Okay, that's fair, Okay, fine,
Um, but I don't I don't exactly understand the pairing of for instance,
like ethnic flags with sexual orientation flags, just out of curiosity, and I
maybe I feel like I should know this. But are there just like hundreds
of thousands of sexual orientation flags or isn't it kind of just like the sands
non binary, Like there's a few a few, but not like but you
haven't know like this speciality like I'm probably mail flag. I haven't guess there's
a flag and a bisexual flag and like a few. But the reason why
we have the pride flags, so we don't have twenty twenty different flags flag
right like this is everything seems like it kind of like if that category did
it really is just saying no pride flag right like, at least in that
spot. From what I understood that what they what they made illegal was any
flag that wasn't a government flag, right or the pow m I a flag.
They made one exception, right, which again I think I understand that
exception. I think I think we can understand that exception. Um, what
what do you think on this, Raphael? Are we just off base?
Like is does it make sense to ban ethnic and racial flags but then allow
how flags to be flown from other countries? Does that make sense? I
mean, the whole thing's nuts and just not well thought out. The only
thing I can think of with the like flags from other countries is if you
have like a diplomat visiting your city, you may want to fly something in
that case to like honor them. Well, I said, the whole thing,
like banning all this stuff is just ridiculous and silly, And I just
to like pop back to what Kelly was saying about, like how is this
gonna be inforced? You know, you're in a park because you know,
I can't read minds, but I'm gonna guess those. You know, there's
a lot of people who are gonna just cops are gonna pass them by,
you know, but God forbid you put up that Pride flag on your own
post in a park, you know. So it's like, I would be
really interesting to see how this laws and forts, because usually when I see
these types of laws, they're not well thought out. They start banning things
they by accident that fall under some definition of what they're trying to ban.
And in this case, I'm sure that's gonna happen. We're gonna it's it's
either the laws either are going to be totally useless that's never enforced, or
it's gonna be like targeted enforced on whatever the cops that day want to deal
with. Yeah, we're seeing the book bands backfiring already with the Bible bands,
right, Yeah, exactly sounds sounds great to me. We don't need
a kids reading that smut. Helen, what what do you what do you
think about this? Is? Is there a better solution? Is there something
else that we could do that also like protects everybody but also just doesn't give
you know, the Christian nationalists a whole bunch of because I think we all
like the no religious flags on the government, like right, like that's cool,
um, But if it comes with this, I don't, I don't.
I don't know. Maybe maybe the remedy is worse than I don't think
they're like, yes, like I think the I think this is gonna backfire
because it will. Um, because this is the this is the problem with
law. The state legislators right now. They keep putting all these you know,
they keep writing on these bills and they want them pass really quickly,
and then they get implemented, and then the public, you know, because
we live in a free society and the majority of people don't like a lot
of this stuff that's happening. It starts biting him in the ass because guess
what, just because you're a hateful person doesn't and you think that it's going
to get you votes the majority of the people. And this is why we
have the constitution. We fight against tyranny and bad ideas and we want to
say, hey, you know what, I don't like this, and I'm
gonna make a stink about it. If you're gonna you know, ban books
or tell people that they can't fly certain flags and anything and anything like that,
and I agree, like I don't, like, I don't know what
the balance is because like I mean, my kind of thing is that,
you know, the private flag isn't a religion, it's just who we are.
So I'm kind of like, you know, so for me, I'm
kind of it's on an ideology. It's how we exist. But if we're
going, if you want to be guanda the law, we only fly like
vibrant flags and the safe flag, you know, I'm you know, I'm
fine, but don't wrap it and this like you know, we're I'm going
to appeal to the Christian nationalists and you know that sort of thing, because
that just looks gross, because like you're gonna get some Yahoo that's gonna like
want to bay on, like the Black Lives Matter flag or something like that,
because that's what's gonna happen. Because as soon as someone starts doing one
thing that's hair full and terrible, it has a snowball effect and people like
to be jerks, so you know, and that's my concern because whenever,
whenever presidents gets set and people think that it's okay to be a butthead other
buttheads follow it, and that's instead of why can't we just be honest and
say, you know what, we're just gonna just have you know, this
is you know, this is state government property, especially at like you know,
like city halls and things like that. We're just gonna fly you know,
the stay flat the American flag, you know, the stay flag and
you know, a badwards flag. I'm that's fine, I'm okay with that,
you know, but don't don't do this. Don't do this hateful like
you know, bigotry, grossness. You know, it's it's a bad look.
It's a bad look Michigan. Just Tam Trammick. I'm telling defender State
Kelly. You know, one of the things I wanted to point out.
I mentioned the Muslim that the mayor was Muslim. The entire city council is
Muslim. There's not a there's not a single non Muslim on the city council.
And m one of the council members, Nahem Chowdery, came right out
and he said it directly, quote unquote, we want to respect the religious
rights of our citizen. Now, this was a bunch of Muslims passing a
law based on their religion. And does anybody remember a few years ago when
everybody on the right was freaking out about Sharia law being passed in the United
States, Remember that this is it. This is Shariah law being passed in
the United States. And I am willing to bet that not a single person
on the far right right has a problem with this law as it stands and
its own merit, I'd be willing to lay money on for sure. And
it just goes to show that the people who are really yelling about Charaia law,
if they really knew what it was they before it. Yeah, and
it it definitely was that. That was something that really really stood out to
me. M And I've seen more and more of this um over the last
handful of months as i've I've worked more in these spaces that are that are
more globally focused and stuff UM and I've seen a handful of fairly conservative Islamists
that are partnering, uh, not only with the Christian nationalists, but unfortunately
some some moderate you know, people in the middle as well. And that's
frustrating because at its core, unfortunately, Islam is a hateful bigoted religion,
just like Christianity and all of these others are. And and so I hope
that this is a moment that that more of us in this country will say,
not not that we're cutting off our our Muslim citizens, not that we're
cutting off our Muslim brothers and sisters and neighbors know, but that this is
a time to cut off Islam because Islam is the problem, not Muslims,
just like Christianity is the problem. Really that's the core. Um, Raphael,
what what do you think on this? Um? Do we need to
do? We need to be raised in arms about sharia law in Michigan?
Um, I mean that city is definitely uh seems to be costs were concern,
especially when you look at um, you know, what's happened in certain
European countries where large you know, sections of cities are just uh, you
know, pretty much majority Muslim. And in theory, I don't have a
problem with majority Muslim or majority Christian and majority anything. It's how they enact
their laws, how they interact with people who don't share their views, because
it's like pride flags aren't hurting those people's uh religious freedom. You know,
they already have lots of Muslim friendly aspects of their city to begin with,
you know, without banning this flag, it's they're already has special treatment from
the research I've seen. But at the same time, I also know,
like I've worked in science for a long time, I've had lots of colleagues
who are Muslim. It's like most of them, a lot of the ones
I've worked with, I don't know. It's because they have science backgrounds wouldn't
be taking this hardline a lot of these issues, you know. So it's
like there is a very you know, there is a balance of people in
charge of things, not just pushing all their religious baggage on the rest of
the city. You know. That's my thing. It's like you could have
a whole city council and a Muslim mayor, but they have to be speaking
for the everyone in that city and not just you know, the majority religion
in there. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a great point to end
on, because again, we shouldn't just have any religion whatsoever pushing their stuff.
So thanks so much for watching and listening, folks, And if you
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