Virginia city limits Confederate flag-flying

[demosincebirth]

LEXINGTON, Va. (AP) — Officials in the rural Virginia city where Robert E. Lee and Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson are buried voted late Thursday to prohibit the flying of the Confederate flag on city-owned poles.

After a lively 2 1/2-hour public hearing, the Lexington City Council voted 4-1 to allow only U.S., Virginia and city flags to be flown. Personal displays of the Confederate flag are not affected. The Sons of Confederate Veterans, whose members showed up in force after leading a rally that turned a downtown park into a sea of Confederate flags, vowed to challenge the ordinance in court.

Some speakers during the meeting said the ordinance was an affront to the men who fought in the Civil War in defense of the South. One speaker stayed silent during his allotted three minutes, in memory of the Civil War dead.

But many speakers complained that the flag was an offensive, divisive symbol of the South's history of slavery and shouldn't be endorsed by the city of 7,000 people.

"The Confederate flag is not something we want to see flying from our public property," said city resident Marquita Dunn, who is black. "The flag is offensive to us."

Most residents who spoke, both blacks and whites, opposed the ordinance. But H.K. Edgerton, the former president of the NAACP chapter in Asheville, N.C., said he supported flying the Confederate flag because he wanted to honor black Confederate soldiers. Edgerton, who is black, wore a T-shirt emblazoned with images of those black soldiers.

"What you're going to do in banning the Southern cross is wrong. May God bless Dixie," he said, amid some gasps from the audience.

Before the rally, ordinance opponents rallied in the city park, then marched to the hearing under a parade of Confederate flags.

"I am a firm believer in the freedom to express our individual rights, which include flying the flag that we decide to fly," said Philip Way, a Civil War re-enactor dressed in a Confederate wool uniform despite the summer temperatures. "That's freedom to me."


http://news.yahoo.com/virginia-city-limits-confederate-flag-flying-033258466.html

[madmom]

1. So does that mean we can and should fly the flag of all the other countries the US went to war with?

The confederate states of American was NOT the United States of America they were our enemies at the time, were they not?

[LiberalFighter]

4. With or against?

If we follow the Confederate standard that would mean all the countries we fought against.

[madmom]

11. Oops, my bad...against.

[demosincebirth]

10. They were. n't

[LiberalFighter]

2. They don't stand a leg in court. The dumb asses.

They aren't prohibiting it on private property. I wonder how many of them are tax nuts because if they required another flag to be flown on public property how much will that cost the taxpayers? And not likely to be kept to just local government offices but also schools too.

Just like I don't understand some businesses have flagpoles with the flag and some don't. Some businesses go to the extreme.

[Shagbark Hickory]

3. How many poles can a city of 7000 possibly own?

[pkdu]

9. Dont forget about Poland! n/t

[GreenStormCloud]

5. Simple solution.

A government flagpole should fly the flag of the government that owns it. Possible exception for Confederate cemeteries is the cemetery is government owned.

Private flagpoles fly whatever the owner wants to fly.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

6. Multiple duplicate/similar threads

[monmouth]

7. Unfortunately many in the south are still fighting the war. n/t

[demosincebirth]

8. Confederate Back soldiers is a myth propagated by the

the Confederate "good ol' boys club" hoping to make their Lost cause less horrendous. How pathetic. "We can believe in the "black soldiers fighting" in the Confederate armies just as soon as historians discover the "thousands" of Jews in the SS and Gestapo."

http://www.bluffton.edu/~bergerd/essays/trclark.htm