ORANGE CITY, Florida (LifeSiteNews) — Conservative Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis endorsed legislation this week banning any flags other than the official banners of the United States and the state of Florida from flying outside government buildings in the Sunshine State, framing it as a straightforward stand against activist bias from offices intended to serve the public.
Introduced by Republican state Sen. Jonathan Martin, SB 1120 would establish that a “governmental entity may not erect or display a flag that represents a political viewpoint, including, but not limited to, a politically partisan, racial, sexual orientation and gender, or political ideology viewpoint. The governmental entity must remain neutral when representing political viewpoints in displaying or erecting a flag.”
“I haven’t seen it, but if you take a position that we’re going to fly the American flag and the state of Florida flag and that’s it, it’s not targeting anybody,” DeSantis said when asked about the legislation, according to Florida Politics. “It’s basically saying that we’re not going to get into this business of doing this. So I think that’s totally fine.”
Singling out “one or two” flags for prohibition, such as LGBT “pride” or Black Lives Matter banners, “would be maybe a content-based discrimination,” the governor added, “but if you say we’re going to fly the U.S. flag, we’re going to fly the state of Florida flag on our public buildings, I think that that’s totally appropriate to be able to do.”
“I mean, you have seen around the world, our embassies flying, I mean, it’s just absurd, some of the things that they’ve done,” DeSantis said. “And so if the Legislature just wants to say, here’s what we’re doing, these two and that’s that, then I don’t think that there’s any problem with that.”
In recent years, American bureaucrats throughout federal and state government have used their official positions to promote LGBT “pride” and other leftist causes through flags, public declarations, and government social media accounts to the greatest extent allowed under the rules governing them. In Florida, however, SB 1120 is likely to make it through the Republican-controlled legislature and be signed by DeSantis, who has made resistance to “woke ideology” a cornerstone of his governorship.