After a week of negative publicity, the Dublin City Council likely will reverse itself and approve flying the rainbow Gay Pride flag next month at City Hall.

Mayor David Haubert and Councilman Arun Goel are now willing to reconsider after hearing from supporters of the LGBTQ community. Haubert, Goel and Councilwoman Melissa Hernandez, who could not be reached for comment Wednesday morning, had previously voted against flying the flag.

Haubert said Wednesday morning that the council would hold a special meeting June 4 to consider adopting a flag policy and approving a June 22 ceremony to hoist the Pride flag for the rest of the month.

He said he was swayed by conversations with constituents and discussions with Emeryville City Councilman John Bauters, who is gay, about the sensitivity of the issue in the LGBTQ community.

Meanwhile, in a Facebook post, Goel said that after many discussions, “I believe that we should have an inclusive flag-raising policy, and YES, I believe that the LGBT pride flag should qualify.”

The bad news is that the embarrassing and painful episode has exposed that, lest there was any doubt, homophobia remains in the Bay Area. As speakers at the May 21 Dublin City Council meeting showed, vicious falsehoods about gays, lesbians and transgenders still have a foothold.

Haubert and Goel acknowledge that they should not have let those hateful comments go unchallenged. “I personally apologize for not being a more proactive voice in directly addressing any inappropriate comments,” Goel said.

June marks the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, the spontaneous protest of police raids of a club in Greenwich Village. The demonstrations served as the catalyst for the gay rights movement in this country.

Cities like San Jose, Oakland and San Francisco fly the LGBTQ’s rainbow flag each June to mark Gay Pride month. In the suburbs, Concord flies the flag, something that would have been unthinkable 30 years ago, when voters rejected an ordinance barring discrimination against people with AIDS.

And, in another sign of suburban progress, the neighboring Walnut Creek City Council voted unanimously this month to fly the flag for the month of June. Speakers lined up to support the effort; no one spoke against it.

Then came the effort in Dublin, led by Councilman Shawn Kumagai, who, as a gay man, knows what discrimination feels like. He served 10 years of active duty in the U.S. Navy under the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

Kumagai proposed a council proclamation declaring June LGBTQ Pride month and flying the rainbow flag at City Hall. Councilwoman Jean Josey, who has worked in the Dublin schools, joined him.

“I see these struggles of our LGBTQ youth for their acceptance, for their safety, for their feelings of worth, for their feelings of not only their physical safety, but their emotional safety,” she said.

“It is very, very important that we send a message to all members of the community, but particularly our youth, that they are worthy just for who they are and nothing else.”

The proclamation was approved unanimously. The fight was over flying the flag.

Opponents warned the council of a “slippery slope,” sometimes reaching the point of absurdity.

One speaker insisted the council would have to raise flags for Jewish, Christian, Muslim and atheist pride months; for Inner Mongolia and Outer Mongolia pride months; and, said the balding man, for the “follicly challenged.”

Another said the city would have to fly the Confederate flag if residents demanded. And the owner of a gun shop insisted the council would have to fly the NRA flag.

They were wrong. There is no legal slippery slope.

If the council doesn’t discriminate on the basis of race or religion, it is free to issue the proclamation and to raise flags of its choosing as a form of free speech, says constitutional law expert Vikram Amar, dean of the University of Illinois College of Law.

Then the comments to the council turned ugly, likening gays to “immoral destruction,” pedophilia and the deterioration of the public-school system. It was a regression to the fearmongering seen in the suburban East Bay in the 1980s.

What was most disturbing was the reaction from the dais, with Goel, Haubert and Hernandez embracing the slippery slope argument and thanking everyone for their comments — what Goel called “a lot of great speeches, a lot of great opinions.”

As Goel and Haubert repeatedly claimed that the city is already inclusive, they ignored comments they had just heard that showed otherwise.

The irony wasn’t lost on Josey. “Quite frankly some of the comments highlighted why we need to be hanging the flag,” she said. They showed “exactly why this particular (LGBTQ) community does not feel safe both emotionally and physically — still in 2019.”

Fortunately, Goel and Haubert apparently now understand that, too.