Two HS Football Players Suspended Indefinitely for Carrying 'Thin Blue Line' Flag, and It Gets Worse

AP Photo/Morry Gash
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Police in riot gear stand outside the Kenosha County Court House Monday, Aug. 24, 2020, in Kenosha, Wis. Kenosha police shot a man Sunday evening, setting off unrest in the city after a video appeared to show the officer firing several shots at close range into the man’s back. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)
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The insane double standards that permeate our political discourse when it comes to corporations and schools continues. If you are someone who wants to kneel for the National Anthem or wear a Black Lives Matter sticker on your helmet, you are part of a protected class. Your protest and support for a cause is just and allowed. In fact, it’s celebrated and promoted.

Meanwhile, if you want to support police and firefighters on the anniversary of 9/11, you end up suspended indefinitely from your high school.

The Blaze has a write-up on what transpired.

According to WKRC-TV, Little Miami High School in Morrow, Ohio, opted to suspend Brady Williams and Jarad Bentley after they expressed their support for first responders before a Sept. 11 football game.

It gets much worse though. These weren’t two kids just trying to stir up division. Their fathers are a police officer and firefighter. They were quite literally honoring 9/11 and their own parents by carrying the flags.

Brady, a senior cornerback whose father is a police officer, said that he was not trying to make a political statement at all in carrying the Thin Blue Line flag.

“I was just doing it to honor the people that lost their lives 19 years ago,” he said.

Jarad — whose father is a firefighter — carried the Thin Red Line flag and told WKRC that he was thinking about his father at the time.

“I was all for it,” he said. “Because my dad is a firefighter, and if it had been him killed on 9/11, I would have wanted someone to do it for him.”

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The school had repeatedly denied their request for the demonstration, citing that the flags were politically divisive and that some might not agree with the message. Frankly, that’s cowardice. Some messages are objectively good and proper. No school district should be stepping in to stop a student from honoring dead first responders over political concerns.

Further, now that they’ve suspended the boys indefinitely, this will be a much bigger political issue than it otherwise would have been. The administrators shot themselves in the foot as so often happens in these situations.

For their part, the students don’t regret what they did. As you can see in the video, all they did was run with and wave a flag around. They didn’t hurt anyone or promote a message of hate. The real question is how this district would have acted if the shoe were on the other foot. Would they be suspending a kid for protesting in the mold of BLM? I think we all know the answer to that.

Up is down, down is up, and things have just gone crazy at this point. As a society, we can not continue to bend the knee to political pressure, especially over something as meaningful as supporting first responders on 9/11. This has to stop, and I suspect these school administrators are going to learn that the hard way.

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(Please follow me on Twitter! @bonchieredstate)

 

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