Belonging Is Not Political
A statement from Phillip Alexander Downie he/him, CEO of the Montgomery County Pride Family || MoCo Pride Center, Inc.
There is something deeply troubling about a Pride flag hanging in a Montgomery County classroom being described as a “political statement.”
According to reporting from Bethesda Today, an educator at Burning Tree Elementary School was initially directed to remove a Pride flag from her classroom after school administration characterized its display as political. Montgomery County Public Schools ultimately corrected that decision and has since stated that MCPS does not have a policy prohibiting Pride flags and remains committed to expressions consistent with its values of inclusion and respect.
Photo by: Kristine Jones, Supreme Court of The United States Rally for Inclusive Education, April 22, 2025.
I am glad the flag can remain.
But we cannot allow the reversal of the decision to become the end of this conversation.
Because before the decision was corrected, an educator was made to feel unwelcome in her own school. She was reportedly warned about how some parents might react. A symbol that tells LGBTQIA+ children and families, you are welcome here, was treated as something potentially controversial enough to remove.
That should concern all of us.
A Pride flag is not a declaration that every person who walks into a classroom must share the same beliefs. It does not tell a child what religion to practice, what politics to embrace, whom to love, or who they must become.
In a school, its most important message can be extraordinarily simple:
You are safe here. You are seen here. You belong here.
Photo by: Kristine Jones, Supreme Court of The United States Rally for Inclusive Education, April 22, 2025.
For an LGBTQIA+ student, particularly a young person who may not hear those messages everywhere else in their life, that can matter enormously.
And belonging cannot depend upon whether everyone in a community agrees that you should be visible.
That is the part of this incident that I find particularly disturbing.
If our response to the possibility that someone may object to LGBTQIA+ people is to make LGBTQIA+ people less visible, we have not created neutrality. We have allowed the anticipated discomfort of some people to determine the belonging of others.
I understand that our schools are navigating an extraordinarily complicated moment. Court decisions, federal actions, changing guidance, litigation and deeply divided public conversations have placed educators and administrators in difficult positions. There are legitimate questions about law and policy that school systems must carefully navigate.
But there must also remain principles that do not change every time the political winds do.
One of those principles must be that every child, teacher, faculty, and staff member who walks through the doors of a Montgomery County public school deserves dignity, safety, and belonging.
LGBTQIA+ children are not political statements. Transgender children are not political statements. A child with two mothers, or two fathers, or non-binary parents, or single LGBTQIA+ parents and caregivers are not political statements. An LGBTQIA+ teacher is not a political statement.
Their existence does not become political because someone objects to it.
At the Montgomery County Pride Family, we spend a great deal of time with LGBTQIA+ young people and their families. At the MCPS LGBTQ+ Student Summit, I have watched young people walk into a room and discover other students who understand them. I have the opportunity to watch them talk, laugh, learn, ask difficult questions, and imagine their futures.
What strikes me most in those spaces is not controversy.
It is a possibility!
It is what happens when young people are given permission to stop defending their existence long enough to simply be young people.
Photo by: Maggie Liu, Montgomery County Public Schools LGBTQIA+ Summit, April 20, 2026.
That is what I want for them in every classroom in Montgomery County.
And this moment cannot be separated from the broader anxiety many LGBTQIA+ students and families are experiencing. Policies, court decisions, and public debates surrounding LGBTQIA+ books, transgender students, privacy, and parental rights are changing rapidly. Young people hear these conversations. They know when adults are debating whether their identities can be discussed, represented or acknowledged.
We should think very carefully about the message they receive when something as simple as a Pride flag becomes a source of institutional hesitation.
Our responsibility as adults is greater than winning the argument of the moment. We are responsible for the environments children inherit from us.
That means we should be asking ourselves a much more fundamental question: When an LGBTQIA+ student walks into one of our schools, what have we done to make sure that student knows they belong?
Not merely that they are permitted to attend. Not merely that discrimination against them is prohibited.
But that they absolutely belong!!
There is a profound difference between tolerance and belonging. Tolerance says, You may be here. Belonging says, This community would not be complete without you.
Montgomery County should always aspire to choose authentic belonging.
I appreciate that MCPS ultimately corrected the decision at Burning Tree Elementary and publicly affirmed that Pride flags are not prohibited. But this incident should also be an opportunity for reflection and clear leadership. No educator should have to wonder whether communicating LGBTQIA+ inclusion will suddenly be interpreted as political. No administrator should be left guessing about whether LGBTQIA+ visibility is compatible with the district's commitment to inclusion. And no student should have to watch the adults around them debate whether a symbol of their belonging is too controversial to display.
We can respect the diversity of beliefs represented throughout Montgomery County while remaining unequivocal about the dignity of every student.
Those principles are not mutually exclusive.
Our schools belong to children from every background, every faith, every race, every family structure, every sexual orientation and every gender identity. Creating room for all of them is not about choosing one community over another.
It is the work of public education.
To our LGBTQIA+ students: there are people throughout this county who see you, who are fighting for you, and who believe deeply in the future you are building.
To our LGBTQIA+ educators and affirming educators: thank you for the countless ways you create safety and belonging, including the small ones that may never make the news.
And to everyone entrusted with leading our schools: this is a moment that calls for courage and clarity. Inclusion means the most when it is tested. Belonging means the most when someone asks us to make it smaller.
We should never make it smaller.
Photo by: Maggie Liu, Montgomery County Public Schools LGBTQIA+ Summit, April 20, 2026.
Our young people deserve classrooms where they can learn without wondering whether who they are has become a controversy. They deserve adults willing to stand beside them. They deserve schools in which belonging is not conditional.
And they deserve to know, unequivocally:
You have not met all the people who are going to love you yet. You absolutely belong, and Always Live In Your Truth!
Phillip Alexander Downie (he/him) CEO Montgomery County Pride Family || MoCo Pride Center, Inc.
