‘You can take the flag off the pole, but you can’t get rid of your neighbor’: Gee responds to WA cities pulling Pride flags

The Oak Harbor City Council voted down a proposal to fly Pride flags on city flagpoles for the second year in a row, with council members arguing the city should remain neutral, Seattle Red reported Thursday. The City of Edmonds went through a similar situation after Mayor Mike Rosen removed the Pride flag from City Hall, ending a tradition that had been in place since June 2021, The Everett Herald reported.

KIRO host Gee Scott challenged listeners to explain how a same-sex relationship affects them personally.

“Tell me how a relationship that involves two people who are gay, a gay marriage, or a gay relationship, tell me how it impacts you, and you can’t use religion,” he said on “The Gee and Ursula Show” on KIRO Newsradio. “That’s the first question.”

Flying a Pride flag is like leaving the porch light on

Gee compared flying the Pride flag to keeping a porch light on for guests, saying that just as a porch light signals to visitors that they are welcome, a flag on a city pole sends the same message to the LGBTQ community.

“One of the reasons you leave a porch light on is usually because if some guests are coming to your house, you might have steps you want to just show them, it’s just a way of being welcoming, the porch light. A flag being up in your city, in your town, is nothing but a porch light, letting the people of the LGBTQ community know that they are welcomed 100%,” he said.

“It’s not an ideology, these are people,” he continued. “But I’ll just say this: you can take the flag off the pole, but you can’t get rid of your neighbor, because your neighbor’s your neighbor. You could try to hide it. Not to be welcoming to your neighbor is disgusting.”

Watch the full discussion in the video above.

Listen to Gee and Ursula on “The Gee and Ursula Show” weekday mornings from 9 am to 12 pm on KIRO Newsradio.