Dan Haar: Gay pride flag in crosshairs as Darien is latest to raise a ban on town property

The national culture war is expanding in its murky way to Darien, where the board of selectmen is set to debate a plan that would ban all non-government flags from flying on town property.

Under the measure, only the flags of the United States, the state of Connecticut and the town of Darien could hoist for display on or over town-owned buildings and property, such as town hall and the beaches. That would exclude flags of other nations such as Ukraine, the POW-MIA flag honoring veterans, the Black Lives Matter flag, the Juneteenth flag and the rainbow flag for LGBT pride.

Why the ban? That’s been a mystery for the last couple of days, since it appeared on the agenda for Monday night’s meeting — sparking immediate criticism from Democrats who say it’s a Republican plot to block the Pride flag.

Their logic: Among all the non-government flags, only the Pride colors honoring and welcoming Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people has flown in Darien over the last year or more, some people told me. Certainly it has been the most prominent, flying over town hall and one of the beaches through June, Pride Month, in 2021 and again this year.

The proposed ban, which would not apply to Darien schools, follows flag-limiting moves in Southington, Goshen, Suffield and other places in CT and across the nation. Sometimes the Pride flag is publicly named by the flag-ban proponents — almost always Republicans — sometimes not.

“We all know that this is about the Pride flag,” Sen. Bob Duff, D-Norwalk, whose district includes part of Darien, told me. “The governing majority in Darien…is bear-hugging these ultra-conservative decisions that we’re seeing in Washington.”

There’s another possible explanation: The board of selectmen could be responding to a U.S. Supreme Court decision handed down on May 2 of this year, in which a unanimous court whacked the city of Boston for barring a right-wing group from flying what it described as a Christian flag during a city hall ceremony in 2017.

The key issue, the justices said in the Shurtleff v. City of Boston case: Boston had allowed some 50 groups to fly their flags over city hall 284 times with no policy in place, so the city couldn’t suddenly bar one group’s colors. And no, the justices all agreed, a Christian flag over city hall did not necessarily violate the constitutional separation of church and state as Boston had claimed.

So, maybe the Darien Selects just feel the need to have a policy and in their wisdom, the best and fairest option is to ban all outside flags. That’s what the Darien GOP suggested in a tweet exchange with Duff, who slammed the proposal Friday on the social media platform.

I turned to First Selectman Monica McNally for an answer. In two emails, the Republican elected in 2021 declined to tell me, saying only that the board “will be reviewing this item at our meeting on Monday, Aug. 22, where we expect a full discussion.”

GOP leaders at Pride celebration

Duff, who is the state Senate majority leader, had harsh words on Twitter, and to me, about a town that this year has deliberated over spending $103 million for Great Island, halted road paving and prevented 16 kindergartners from Norwalk from enrolling in the local schools under the Open Choice program, “and yet they’re stuck on this flag thing to satisfy their extremist base in town.”

The board of selectmen has three Republicans, led by McNally, and two Democrats. One of those Dems, Michael Burke, declined to comment on the proposal, but said of the Pride flag, “I support the flying of the flag, yes, and other flags of similar, appropriate purpose.”

This would be simple enough if it were Republican cultural conservatives battling Democrats over a symbol of liberalism. But McNally was there on June 12 for the Darien Pride celebration that drew 600 at the First Congregational Church. She wasn’t just present, she welcomed everyone from the podium.

McNally’s predecessor, Republican Jayme Stevenson, the GOP nominee for the 4th District seat in the U.S. House, was there, too. “It was a completely bipartisan event,” Dan Guller, chair of the Darien Pride committee, told me Friday night.

And McNally is the one who approved the Pride flags flying over town hall and Pear Tree Point Beach this year, following Stevenson giving the nod last year.

There have been some incidents of pushback against the flag; one was stolen last year and some signs for a pride celebration went missing this year.

‘This is just the start’

The culture wars feature murky politics in the Trump era as the Republican Party lurches to the right, even in wealthy enclaves that were traditionally moderate socially, such as Darien — by some measures the richest town in the richest state in the richest nation in the world.

Conservatives on the GOP town committee have been known to throw their weight around lately, challenging moderate Republicans on elected boards. Is this part of that? We don’t know.

Either way, we can expect to see more issues like the Darien flag proposal in Connecticut towns as a time when a conservative Supreme Court is throwing social turmoil back at states and municipalities in school prayer, reproductive rights, affirmative action and more areas.

“No matter which side of the issue you’re on, there’s no arguing that it is going to create a large shift in local decision-making,” said Joe DeLong, CEO of the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities. “There are going to be more and more controversial, sea-changing discussions…This is just the start.”

Halting an inclusive tradition

It’s a rough start for Darien. A draft of the proposal says the goal is a policy that “follows the United States and State of Connecticut provisions governing the display of flags” — but that’s misleading. The state routinely flies special, non-government flags such as Juneteenth, POW/MIA and the Pride flag.

And there’s nothing in the Supreme Court decision that even suggests towns should ban outside flags from teir property altogether.

“When it comes to acceptance and love and the lessons we want to teach kids who are growing up in Darien, I can’t imagine why the adults in that community would prohibit the flying of the gay pride flag,” said Sen. Will Haskell, D-Westport, whose district includes part of Darien with this year’s redrawn maps.

He also talked about flags honoring veterans and foreign nations. “I’m optimistic that whoever is proposing this policy is going to see the error of their ways, the disrespectful and noninclusive signal that it sends.”

Barring all flags other than those of the nation, state and town may seem neutral and in some ways, it is. But all this inclusive flag-raising has become a tradition, so halting it is taking a position — for better or worse — in a war over the government’s role in advancing a multi-cultural, welcoming society.

“I feel like being able to see a pride flag flying from town hall and the beach tells our queer youth that the leadership of their hometown supports them,” said Guller, the Pride committee chair, “and I would hate to see that taken away.”