'We're not done': N.B. man behind straight-pride flag says fight to fly it isn't over
“There’s a lot of people angry over the flag being taken down. The same as if the gay pride people would be angry if their flag was taken down,” Glenn Bishop said in an interview Tuesday.
“We’re not done. We’re going to regroup and see what’s next.”
Bishop, a retired welder, insisted he is not the least bit anti-gay but is simply proud to be straight, and doesn’t understand why Chipman village officials removed the flag after a single day.
Bishop called the flag’s removal discrimination against straight people, and said he and his supporters will meet soon to discuss next steps. He said they could include a court battle or perhaps a challenge at the ballot box in the next municipal election.
“One or the other or possibly both,” he said.
“It costs a lot of money to go to court. It’s a possibility, if the money comes in. And there’s no money coming in.”
Chipman had flown the rainbow LGBT flag this summer, and Bishop said he had no objections to it.
But he wanted to show his own straight pride — he conceived the flag and it was made by a friend, and they went through “the proper procedures” to get it raised by the village.
He said one intention was to signal that the whole village wasn’t gay, and to represent “95 per cent of the population.”
“The straight people built this nation … Now we’re being told we can’t say we’re straight.”
He said he spoke to activists at the flagpole on Monday, and explained his position to them, and offered to sit down with a representative.
“Maybe we can fly both flags together,” he mused.
Asked about the straight flag’s design, he said the black and white stripes weren’t a response to the rainbow stripes of an LGBT flag, but just a way of livening up the background to the international symbol he says means “man and woman relationship.”
Bishop said he grew up with gays and lesbians as friends, and he sometimes defended them physically as a young man.
“I’d do it again, but I’m an old man,” he said.
“I am not anti-gay. I’m not … I have friends who are homosexual and lesbian, and I don’t have any problems with them at all.”
