The Huntington Beach City Council voted last month to discontinue flying the Pride flag at City Hall in June. The City Council voted 4-3 along party lines, with the Republican councilmembers supporting the proposal and the Democrats opposing it. 

The decision reverses a unanimous decision made in 2021 by a previous city council of 6-0 to fly the Pride flag at city hall in June.

“We, the City of Huntington Beach, are one community with many different cultures and people,” Councilmember Pat Burns, the proposal’s sponsor, wrote in a Feb. 7 statement. “All are equally valued members of our community, and none are to be treated differently or discriminated against. As a municipal organization, the City of Huntington Beach should avoid actions that could easily or mistakenly be perceived as divisive.”

On Feb. 21, the City Council voted 4-3 to formally pass the ordinance. This measure limits the display of flags on city property to the U.S. flag, the State of California’s flag, the City of Huntington Beach’s flag, Orange County’s flag and the flags of the six military branches. 

Ian Barnard, the director of the LGBTQ Studies minor at Chapman University, told The Panther why Burns’s argument for banning the Pride flag on city property is problematic, citing the dramatic rise in anti-LGBTQ hate crimes that Orange County Human Relations Commission noted in their Hate Crimes Report of 2021. 

The report found that 22 reported hate crimes in 2021 were motivated by sexual orientation bias, which was an 83% increase from 2020.

“When (Burns) says, ‘We’re all one, we’re all valued,’ (the 2021 hate crimes report) shows that it’s not true,” Barnard said. “The fact that all the Republicans on the city council voted to ban the display of Pride flags and the Democrats voted against (it) shows that this is a partisan political issue by these conservatives who are homophobic.”

Barnard said that the measures against flying the Pride flag on city property sends the message that the LGBTQ community in Huntington Beach and the rest of Orange County is not welcome.

“(The policies) tell the LGBTQ communty that the Huntington Beach City Council is homophobic,” Barnard said. ”If you’re queer, you shouldn’t go to Huntington Beach because those are the values that the city represents.”

On the other hand, some attendees at the council meeting said the ordinance was a good idea in order to not cause division among residents by picking and choosing which flags are flown on city property.

Don Kennedy, a member of the Huntington Beach planning commission, called the U.S. flag “the most inclusive flag in the world” and spoke in favor of the flag policy change during public comments.

“The council’s choice to limit what flags fly on government property is not an attack,” Kennedy said during the meeting. “Conversely, it’s an act of inclusion, because it says to the residents that the government is not in the business of picking flags because there are many, and if we pick one and not another than that act itself becomes exclusionary.”

This issue has come up in Orange as well. In 2021, the Orange City Council refused to put an item to discuss flying the Pride flag on an agenda after efforts from Councilmember Arianna Barrios. 
Chapman’s director of church relations Nancy Brink gifted the city a Pride flag during a council meeting in 2021 and told The Panther in a previous interview about her disappointment in the councilmembers.

Barnard said that avoiding businesses and organizations in Huntington Beach will make Republican City Council members see financial consequences for opposing flying the Pride flag at City Hall, referencing the Blue Shield of California’s decision to cancel their Huntington Beach retreat because of the City Council’s decision.

“Hopefully, not only will queer people boycott organizations and businesses (in Huntington Beach), but people who come to Huntington Beach to do conferences will boycott the city as well, so that those Republican council members will also see an economic impact besides seeing that they are going against the tide of history and they are just kind of advertising their bigotry,” Barnard told The Panther.