To the editor:

My reason for voting against flying the Pride flag on the Little Compton Town Hall was not anti-LGBTQ, but was for the reasons below:

First off, I want to say that I have no problem with the LGBTQ+ community, in fact I attended their Pride Celebration last year and met quite a few of my friends there. I hope to attend their celebration this year.

Flying the Pride Flag, or any other flag, from the Town Hall is not what one particular flag represents but once you fly one flag you are committed to flying all flags. I find this troubling because it will be discriminatory to pick and chose which flag to fly. Are we going to fly the Confederate flag next or some racially motivated flag when requested that may be offensive to many? What if we have a request to fly several flags at the same time. Are we going to allow that?

Since the request is to fly the flag on a Town building, which was paid for by the residents of Little Compton, I believe any flag flown from such a building should be all inclusive and unifying. At several town council meetings it became very apparent that flying any other flag except the American, State, or Little Compton flags was very divisive. It was clear after some of these meetings that was the consensus of most of the residents of the Little Compton.

The feedback I have received from the residents is the majority of them want only the American flag flown on our town buildings.

Gary Mataronas

Mr. Mataronas is a member of the Little Compton Town Council.