06/02/2026
Whose Flag Should Fly Over City Hall? A Government That Claims to Represent Everyone Should Act Like It
Earlier today, June 1, Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones raised a special interest flag over your/our city hall.
As a candidate for Bexar County Judge, I spend my time considering how government should treat the people it is supposed to serve. Every resident of San Antonio is also a resident of Bexar County, so what happens at City Hall is not a separate world from the county that I am asking to publicly serve.
And what is flying over City Hall this “Pride Month” raises a question bigger than any one building: should a government elected to represent everyone use public property to lift one segment of the community above the rest? The city might be within the letter of the current law to raise that flag. The courts have said a government may choose the message it sends from its own pole. So this isn’t necessarily a question of law.
It is a question of what a government should choose to do when it claims to speak for everyone.
Here is the difficulty. City Hall belongs to all of us. The flagpole on its roof is not the property of any party, cause, or population, large or small. It is public, paid for by every taxpayer and standing over the seat of a government elected to represent every resident equally. When the only flags flying there are the national, state, and city flags, that pole speaks for the whole city, because those flags include every San Antonian without exception.
The moment the city adds a flag that stands for one particular segment of the community, the pole stops speaking for everyone and starts speaking for some as a special class.
Supporters call the “Pride flag” a symbol of inclusion. But a flag that represents one segment of the community does not by its nature include all of them. It speaks for those who share its cause and along its ideological lines. This current, special interest practice began under the immediate former Mayor of San Antonio who is also running for Bexar County Judge. Under his mayoral administration, taxpayers also footed the bill for a $30,000,000 plus renovation of City Hall. One group didn’t pay for that, we all did.
Do San Antonians along with the rest of the residents of Bexar County want to see this type of class warfare expanded to the County?? It is divisive not unitive.
The flags that traditionally fly over City Hall are the only ones that truly leave no one out. That is their quiet power, and it is exactly what a government should want from the banner above its own front door.
There is also a problem that the city cannot answer fairly once it starts down this road. If the public flagpole is open to one special interest group's flag, on what neutral principle does the city tell the next group no?
This is not a hypothetical concern. The U.S. Supreme Court took up a case in 2022 precisely because the City of Boston had opened its flagpole to outside groups and then tried to turn one away.
A city ends up with one of two choices: speak only for itself and play favorites among its own residents, or open the pole to all and lose any ability to say no.
Neither is a good place for a government that is supposed to treat everyone the same, as equals.
None of this is about any one community's worth or welcome. The people who make up the “LGBTQ” segment of neighbors are San Antonians, fully and equally, and nothing about a neutral flag policy says otherwise. The point is the opposite. Equal treatment means the city does not rank its residents by whose symbol gets hoisted over the people's building and whose does not.
Elected Officials are elected to represent everyone who lives here, not to choose which of us the government will celebrate from its rooftop. A simple, neutral flag policy focused on uniting our community is the best route. Flying only the United States flag, the Texas flag, and the San Antonio flag and no others, would say something the current practice cannot. It would say that this government truly belongs to every one of us.
We need leadership who will unite our community not divide it.
Patrick Von Dohlen is a candidate for Bexar County Judge, a father of nine, and a financial adviser for almost three decades.
