Fox News kicked off Tuesday morning continuing to play defense for President Trump’s comments about the white supremacist uprising last weekend in Charlottesville. Star Parker of the Center for Urban Renewal and Education was quick to accuse counter-protesters of being equally as culpable, making a particularly ridiculous comparison between the LGBTQ pride flag and the Confederate flag.

After insisting the country is built on “e pluribus unum, many becoming one” and not “the multi-culturalism and diversity” that the “hard left” promotes — as if the two are somehow different — Parker accused liberals of hypocrisy. “What’s really interesting and really incredible irony here is the same people that are demanding that the Confederate flag comes down are the same people that are insisting that the rainbow flag goes up,” she said.

“These two flags represent the exact same thing: that certain people groups are not welcome here. So if Nancy Pelosi wants to say that we’re going to start shutting down first amendment rights of a certain group of people, then what what happens next time homosexuals want to walk through an American city and protest and counter-protesters come out?”

Perhaps Parker is not familiar with the history of these two symbols.

The Confederate flag was flown when 11 southern states declared war on their own country, seeking the right to preserve the institution of slavery.


Artist Gilbert Baker, who passed away just a few months ago, first designed the pride flag in 1978 after being challenged by Harvey Milk to devise a symbol for the gay community with a more positive connotation than the pink triangle — which was used by Nazis to identify gay people. His original eight-stripe flag had symbology for each color: sexuality (hot pink), life (red), healing (orange), sunshine (yellow), nature (green), art (turqoise), harmony (indigo), and spirit (violet).

When it first flew at San Francisco Gay Freedom Day in 1978, Baker recalled, “It completely astounded me that people just got it, in an instant like a bolt of lightening – that this was their flag. It belonged to all of us.”

So, the Confederate flag is a symbol of white supremacy, and the pride flag is a symbol of visibility and inclusion designed specifically to counter such notions of oppression for a community long demonized in the shadows.

What also seems lost on Parker is that she’s talking about the same group in both her examples. When “the homosexuals” march, there are always counter-protesters, and it’s generally the same people who were carrying Confederate flags in Charlottesville this weekend — as they demonstrated forcefully.