Two controversies raise issues of ethical line-drawing in state and local laws.
1. Sign or Art? Leavitt’s Country Bakery in Conway, a community of more than 10,000 people in New Hampshire, erected a colorful mural over the store in 2022. It was the creation of local high school art students showing sunbeams shining down on a mountain range made of sprinkle-covered chocolate and strawberry doughnuts, a blueberry muffin, a cinnamon roll and other pastries. The muralwas popular with everyone but the local zoning board, which ruled that the painting was not art but advertising. This meant it was a sign, and at about 90 square feet, four times bigger than the local sign ordinance allows. Lawyers for Conway insist that “restricting the size of signs serves the significant government interest of preserving the town’s aesthetics, promoting safety, and ensuring equal enforcement.” The store’s owner sued the town in federal court in 2023, saying his freedom of speech rights were being violated. He’s seeking a symbolic single dollar in damages.
“Government officials don’t get to tell people, including entrepreneurs and businesses, what they can and can’t paint,” the Virginia-based Institute for Justice, which is representing Young, argues. And no one can say with a straight face that Leavitt’s mural would be any safer, healthier or more aesthetically pleasing if it portrayed flowers instead of pastries.”
Conway’s sign code states in part that the town “has no intention of restricting individual free speech, but the town does recognize its right to place reasonable restrictions upon commercial speech.”
The trial on the controversy is finally about to commence. As with the anti-gay wedding bakery mess (what is it about bakeries?), this should have been solvable without having to go to court. Obviously that mural is advertising, and it is also art. The town could have issued an exemption after the sign went up; the shop owner could have negotiated with authorities before erecting the sign. Billboard prohibitions in zoning laws have been upheld by courts. I think the donut shop owner loses.
2. What is a flag? Contrary to a typically unethical left-biased media headline, this one is not about the relative merits of Pride Flags and swastikas. “Nazi flags can fly in Utah schools, but not pride flags, GOP lawmaker says,” is the Salt Lake Tribune’s headline. You see, Republicans are white supremacists and fascists who hate gays, just like Hitler did. But the state legislator’s law is not about banning the flying of the rainbow “pride” flags while approving the “flying” of Nazi flags over schools.
Utah State Rep. Trevor Lee has proposed HB0077, which originally applied only to schools but now applies to all government buildings or property. It lists the flags that can be flown and displayed in government buildings and schools: the Utah state and U.S. flags, military flags, flags for other countries, the flags of Native American tribes and official flags for colleges and universities. It also makes clear that displaying a “historic version of a flag … that is temporarily displayed for educational purposes” is not prohibited. This would include the use of the Confederate and Nazi flags in a historical or educational context.
Pride flags are not allowed, and that is appropriate. They are statements of political advocacy, like Black Lives Matter flags and religious sect flags. Allowing the Confederate and Nazi flags to be used for educational or historical purposes is a proper rejection of the historical censorship inflicted on the culture during the Obama Administration, when national Civil War battlefield souvenir shops were ordered not to sell merchandise featuring Confederate flags.
Ethics Alarms 
Flags: In my opinion all 50 states in the United States of America should have a law specifically that all state and municipal buildings within their state are restricted to flying ONLY United States of America flag and their State flag, period. The only restrictions for flags flown on private property should be limiting actual pornography.
Also; in my opinion, businesses within the United States of America should choose to never fly a flag other than the United States of America flag and their State flag, thus staying out of virtue signaling about hot political topics of the day. Those that choose to fly hot political topic flags risk known and unknown boycotts related to their public virtue signaling. All choices have negative and positive consequences including choices to virtue signal to the public.
What infuriates me is when protesters take down the American flag and replace it with the flag of a foreign country. This was done in D.C. in the fall when ‘Palestinian’ protester took the US flag off of federal buildings and replaced them with the Palestinian (Hamas?) flag. Pro-illegal immigration protester are doing that some with the Mexican flag. Part of me says that such an act signifies that the land has just been conquered by a foreign power and my duty as a member of the militia is to kill those people. I do realize these are most likely stupid college students or arrogant illegal aliens. However, I think if you asked them if they are doing that to send the message that this area is now controlled by Palestine or Mexico, I do believe most of them would answer in the affirmative. I think they do understand the significance of what they are doing, but I think they are play acting and don’t understand that such behavior can get you shot in many places in the world.
Try to go to Iran or Kazakhstan or Hungary with a group of friends and take down their flag off of a government building and replace it with the US flag while shouting ‘USA…USA’. See what happens.
At UNC Chapel Hill last fall, some of the protesters took down the U.S. flag to replace it with a Palestinian flag.
Some students — I want to say they were frat boys — confronted them, put back the United States flag, and proceeded to guard it from the protesters.
It made the news and I seem to recall that the publicity was favorable — as it should have been. I’d wager that most people watching that coverage were thinking “Good job!”
It really shouldn’t even be a partisan thing, although it probably is, these days.
About the sign/art: Yes the mural is both a sign and art. What’s relevant is that the art IS a sign and they have restrictions on signs. The business knew these restrictions and now they want the world to change to meet their expectations. They made a choice to violate the rules and they need to correct their wrong, period.
I kind view this similarly to how I view a rich urban dweller choosing to move to a rural area and built their million dollar home down wind of a cow, chicken or pig stock farm. Now after they’ve moved in they want the farm closed because farm shit stinks. They knew there was a stock farm there and they knew shit stinks and now they want the world around them to change to meet their self centered expectations. They made a choice to build where they did and now they need to live with it.
I don’t you left something out of the farm analogy. The rich urban dweller bought the land downwind of the farm because it was much cheaper than other land because it is downwind of the farm. They knew the land was cheap because of the farm (or gun range or drag strip…), but they bought it because they knew they could have their cheap land without the downside by suing.
Step 1. Buy cheap land.
Step 2. Ruin other people’s lives.
Step 3. Profit.
I had a client who ran a Farmers Market. He got cited for a non-permitted “sign.”
what was this sign? A 9-foot tall chicken statue. We fought with the City over the sign/art distinction and paid the stupid $35 permit fee.
-Jut
My childhood school division brought in a similar rule recently, and it’s causing heads to spin. One of my secondary-school math teachers attended a school board meeting, and spat fire for two minutes: “We have issues with substitute teacher availability, air quality, and grades, does this policy address any of that?”
No, no it doesn’t. It’s not supposed to. We can walk and chew gum at the same time. The presence of the flags doesn’t help with staffing, air quality or educational attainment either, but if this were the other way, the school board had already banned the pride flag, and there was a proposed policy change allowing them, would you have stood there bitching that we couldn’t possibly concern ourselves with flags while these other issues were in play?
Of course not. None of your concerns, or even priorities, are invalid, but the issues you’re talking about take resources, resources the school probably doesn’t have, because really… who is ideologically opposed to a working HVAC system? But pulling propaganda off walls is cheap and easy.
I need to see a 360 degree view to decide on this one. If that part of the building was put up just to put the mural on it, then I think they need to take it down. It is an ad. If that was a preexisting part of the building, a top floor or a vertical partition to hide the HVAC equipment, then I think it should be allowed to stay. If they painted the same design on the lower part of the building (around the windows and doors), that would be allowed, correct? If you can paint the lower part in a design, you can paint the top floor as well. The tricky part is, what if that is a recently added vertical partition to hide the HVAC equipment and they decided to paint it so it would look nice on installation? I am not sure on that one.
It indeed appears to be more a structural feature of the roof, and ironically one intended for supporting signage. It’s only visible by traffic going in one direction, and rural enough to have a gravel parking lot, and a campground as a neighbor.
I do indeed think government has a compelling interest in regulating commercial speech, and this clearly qualifies as commercial. (See my guest post yesterday for an even more intrusive example.)
The linked story says that the store has been around for 45 years, so that mural was an addition in 2022.
The wall structure the mural is painted on was previously the same white trimmed maroon siding as the rest of the building, as was the triangular gable. The roadway sign was the only sign previously.
Looking at neighboring businesses, they also lack on-building signage, which makes me even more convinced this is a well established and known rule for the area.
There’s a dude in Eau Claire, WI who owns quite a bit of real estate. He is most well known for owning a restaurant named Mona Lisa. The outside of the restaurant sports a large depiction of the woman. So does every, other building he owns in town. Just to make sure you know he owns it. But it’s art!
“Pride flags are not allowed, and that is appropriate.” Eh, no.
“Allowing the Confederate and Nazi flags to be used for educational or historical purposes is a proper rejection of the historical censorship inflicted on the culture during the Obama Administration … .” Eh, okay.
First, the Nazis and the rebels. The wording of the proposed legislation allows for the display of historical flags of other countries, so the Nazi flag is in. Whether or not the CSA was an ‘other country’ is debatable enough that we’ll have to run that up to the Supreme Court to find out. Regardless, it should be allowed in the right context.
The Pride flag does not seem to fit into the list of allowed flags, so, it is out. But, that is not appropriate at all. That flag and those of other special interest groups should be allowed in the classroom when they pertain to the subject matter being taught. (The proposed law does not seem to distinguish between display in a classroom and flying a flag in front of a building.) An educational lesson which omits pertinent graphics is an incomplete lesson.
There is no justification for current activist movements to be taught in any elementary schools, and the law was obviously addressing schools and government buildings flying the flag as a symbol of political and ideological support. How would grade school curriculum ever have a need to use a Pride flag? The Civil War and WWII are juuust a bit more critical to a basic education.
I don’t see where the proposed law distinguishes among grade levels nor among school levels (elementary, middle, high, college). The ban would apply to all government property.
Neither “fly a flag” nor “flying a flag” appear in the text. “Display” appears several times, and the text says display means “to place a flag in a prominent location on government property where the flag is easily visible.” The description of a flag says it usually is a cloth rectangle with a distinctive design and, significantly here, also, “a depiction of the fabric” previously referenced. A depiction, for me, means a picture, poster, drawing, or some such, none of which would fly from a flag pole, but might fly if shaped into a paper airplane.
Finally, the first statement, last. There is a significant difference between teaching current activist movements, which should be forbidden, and teaching about those movements which should be encouraged.
WordPress tricked me into re-posting Jack’s comment. I apologize for that.
I do not trust teachers to understand the distinction, and the gay/trans/bi etc rights movements are not subjects for elementary school. Is that really in question?
Looks like my last comment and Jack’s reply have been removed, a technical glitc, I guess.
I’m sorry. My fault. When I took out your inadvertent repost of my reply,that was the result. I can’t tell on my administrator screen which comment is being replied to in some cases.
No prob. I was able to recover a copy of the text that I had already trashed on my tablet.
Thanks, HJ.
[Re-post of a comment which was accidentally deleted yesterday.]
I don’t see where the proposed law distinguishes among grade levels nor among school levels (elementary, middle, high, college). The ban would apply to all government property.
Neither “fly a flag” nor “flying a flag” appear in the text. “Display” appears several times, and the text says display means “to place a flag in a prominent location on government property where the flag is easily visible.” The description of a flag says it usually is a cloth rectangle with a distinctive design and, significantly here, also, “a depiction of the fabric” previously referenced. A depiction, for me, means a picture, poster, drawing, or some such, none of which would fly from a flag pole, but might fly if shaped into a paper airplane.
Finally, the first statement, last. There is a significant difference between teaching current activist movements, which should be forbidden, and teaching about those movements which should be encouraged.
Here’s what it looked like before they painted it…
Thanks, Steve. The signs/art are hideous. Maybe the one in the gable is okay, but the other one is just plain ridiculous. Having it be done by high school kids is a very cynical play in my book.