In a now-deleted TikTok video, a Southern California teacher says that she suggested teens in her high school class pledge allegiance to an LGBTQ Pride flag instead of a missing U.S. flag.
In the video, the Back Bay High School teacher in Costa Mesa says she lets students decide what to do for the daily Pledge of Allegiance, and this year they decided to stand but not recite the pledge, The Orange County Register reported.
“Except for the fact that my room does not have a flag,” she says in the video, which has since been reposted by others. The teacher says she removed the U.S. flag while students took part in remote learning because it made her feel “uncomfortable” and has not been able to find it.
When a teen told her it was “kind of weird” to pledge to a non-existent flag, the teacher says she told the class she’d work harder on finding the lost flag.
“In the meantime, I tell this kid, ‘We do have a flag in the class that you can pledge your allegiance to,’” the teacher says in the video. “And he like, looks around and goes, ‘Oh, that one?’”
The video then cuts to a rainbow-colored LGBTQ Pride flag hanging in the classroom.
A Newport-Mesa Unified School District spokesperson said the teacher has been removed from the classroom during an investigation, the Los Angeles Times reported.
“Respecting our flag is a value we instill in students and is an expectation of our staff,” district officials wrote Monday on Twitter, saying it is being taken with “extreme seriousness.”
The district has declined to comment further, citing confidential personnel matters, NBC News reported.
The video and reposts have sparked a backlash, with more than 1,300 people commenting on the district’s Twitter post. Many demand the teacher be fired.
“I found the way she was laughing at misleading her student to be the worst part of the video,” read one comment. “I don’t care about her personal view of the flag, but her laughing about how she treated the student tells me she is unfit to teach.”
“I’m in full support of the pride community, but I don’t compare the pride flag to the American flag — they’re apples and oranges,” parent Stephanie Cox told the Los Angeles Times. “Have the pride flag, but we’re not saying the ‘Pledge of Allegiance’ to it. That’s for the flag of the United States of America.”
“What kind of parent would allow their child to be taught by this wacko?” Richard Grenell, former acting director of national intelligence under President Donald Trump, wrote on Twitter.
*story by The Sacremento Bee
