Fox News Guest Says Confederate And Pride Flags Are 'The Exact Same Thing'

A Fox News guest compared the symbolism of the LGBTQ pride flag with the Confederate flag on Tuesday’s “Fox & Friends.” 

Republican commentator and author Star Parker appeared on Tuesday morning’s episode, during which co-host Steve Doocy asked her about Democratic House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s statement Monday, which called on President Donald Trump to fire chief strategist Steve Bannon. The remarks came in response to the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend.

“What do you think about [Pelosi], who made this statement yesterday: ‘It shouldn’t take the president of the United States two days to summon the basic decency to condemn murder and violence by Nazis and white supremacists,’” Doocy asked. 

“That is not what happened,” Parker replied. “Nancy Pelosi is exploiting an opportunity that they think will play to their side. On Saturday, there were two sides that were in an American city that were ― then it was escalating very rapidly. No, the question became then, well, do you denounce the one part of it?”

Parker said anger over the display of the Confederate flag is, actually, ironic.  

“But you know 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 added. “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 happens the next time that the homosexuals want to walk through an American city and protest and counter protesters come out?”

The pride flag was designed by artist Gilbert Baker, who was inspired in part by the reclaiming of the pink triangle ― a symbol used by the Nazis to designate gays ― to design the rainbow flag, whose colors represent everything from healing to harmony.

Iterations of Confederate flags, however, have divisive symbolism. Some claim it represents southern pride, but others contend it only represents slavery, oppression and white nationalism. Matthew Guterl, a professor of Africana and American studies at Brown University who studies race post-Civil War, said it’s impossible to separate any positive from the negative. 

“When someone says it’s about history, well, that particular history is inseparable from hate, because it is about hate,” he told the Washington Post back in 2015. “It’s about racism, and it’s about slavery.”