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 want to hear more from the nonprofits, click here.