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Home My WebLink About07-07-25 Public Comment - M. Gray - Comment for City Commission Meeting. July 8th. 2025. Monica GrayFrom:Monica Gray To:Bozeman Public Comment Subject:[EXTERNAL]Comment for City Commission Meeting. July 8th. 2025. Monica Gray Date:Monday, July 7, 2025 12:48:18 PM Attachments:To City of Bozeman.07.07.2025. Monica Gray.pdf CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe. Hello, Attached is a PDF version of my comment. The copy is here below as well. Thank you for your consideration of my comments. Sincerely, Monica Gray The city of Bozeman has the opportunity to make the pride flag into our city flag.Missoula has set a good example. We are sitting here wondering if flying a rainbow flag is acceptible, meanwhile, topics that have true substance are being neglected, causing repercussions in ourcommunity. Being gay is not a threat to anyone. This has been the strategy for manypoliticians, to distract people with hatred, fear and propaganda: victimiser becomes the victim. If your salary depends on taxpaying citizens in this democracy, you need to do the right thing: encourage imagination, commemoration of our shared heritage andrecognition of the diversity of peoples that have built this country. Are you participating in the misinformation and cancel-culture and that spawns school shootings? Are you making kids feel like they have to carry their birth certificate wherever they go? Do we want children in school to practice dialogue andcompassion or repression and violence? I think the rainbow flag inspires the dialogue and verbal conversations we need to create if we are to prevent violence in this country. Our very town of Bozeman has been named after a gay man: John Bozeman, whowas buried at the cemetery here right on top of his lover’s coffin. John Bozeman was definitely not murdered by Indians, as revisionist history would have us believe, but probably killed by homophobic white men. Check out Extreme History Project or go visit the Gallatin History Museum to find out for yourself. The fact that we are even debating the presence of gay rainbow flags is a symptom of the authoritarianism and plutocracy gaining traction in the USA. We are wasting our time on gender issues and xenophobia, meanwhile, the wealthy 1% of American people are making self-preserving decisions by stripping our public lands ofprotection and environmental regulation. We see it right here in Bozeman, as most city and county commissioners have apparently voted in favour of capitalising on the sale of all green spaces and would-be wildlife corridors to out-of-state developers who build cheaply and with planned obsolescence. We should be talkingabout a moratorium on development and we should be building structures with awareness of climate chaos, catastrophic fire and heat waves. Yet, we are stuck on topics like whether men should play sports alongside women. When we ban a rainbow flag but allow the Blue Lives Matter countermovement tofly their flag, we insert white-male chauvinism into our community. Are we flyingthese black and blue countermovement flags in order to promote militarised ‘fight till death’ ideology? Montanans do not need protection from anything except authoritarianism. Americans have mass produced clothing and paraphernalia withthe Blue Lives Matter or the black American flag on it, probably much more thanthere have been rainbow flags replicated. Are we fighting just for the sake of fighting? The president of the United States is a self-preserving felon, he was impeached, and is a hate-mongering misogynist. Let’s stop worrying about salaries at stake and let’s start making decisions for the people, by the people. comment for city commission of Bozeman July 8th, 2025 Monica Gray The city of Bozeman has the opportunity to make the pride ﬂag into our city ﬂag. Missoula has set a good example. We are sitting here wondering if ﬂying a rainbow ﬂag is acceptible, meanwhile, topics that have true substance are being neglected, causing repercussions in our community. Being gay is not a threat to anyone. This has been the strategy for many politicians, to distract people with hatred, fear and propaganda: victimiser becomes the victim. If your salary depends on taxpaying citizens in this democracy, you need to do the right thing: encourage imagination, commemoration of our shared heritage and recognition of the diversity of peoples that have built this country. Are you participating in the misinformation and cancel-culture and that spawns school shootings? Are you making kids feel like they have to carry their birth certiﬁcate wherever they go? Do we want children in school to practice dialogue and compassion or repression and violence? I think the rainbow ﬂag inspires the dialogue and verbal conversations we need to create if we are to prevent violence in this country. Our very town of Bozeman has been named after a gay man: John Bozeman, who was buried at the cemetery here right on top of his lover’s coffin. John Bozeman was deﬁnitely not murdered by Indians, as revisionist history would have us believe, but probably killed by homophobic white men. Check out Extreme History Project or go visit the Gallatin History Museum to ﬁnd out for yourself. The fact that we are even debating the presence of gay rainbow ﬂags is a symptom of the authoritarianism and plutocracy gaining traction in the USA. We are wasting our time on gender issues and xenophobia, meanwhile, the wealthy 1% of American people are making self-preserving decisions by stripping our public lands of protection and environmental regulation. We see it right here in Bozeman, as most city and county commissioners have apparently voted in favour of capitalising on the sale of all green spaces and would-be wildlife corridors to out-of-state developers who build cheaply and with planned obsolescence. We should be talking about a moratorium on development and we should be building structures with awareness of climate chaos, catastrophic ﬁre and heat waves. Yet, we are stuck on topics like whether men should play sports alongside women. When we ban a rainbow ﬂag but allow the Blue Lives Matter countermovement to ﬂy their ﬂag, we insert white-male chauvinism into our community. Are we ﬂying these black and blue countermovement ﬂags in order to promote militarised ‘ﬁght till death’ ideology? Montanans do not need protection from anything except authoritarianism. Americans have mass produced clothing and paraphernalia with the Blue Lives Matter or the black American ﬂag on it, probably much more than there have been rainbow ﬂags replicated. Are we ﬁghting just for the sake of ﬁghting? The president of the United States is a self- preserving felon, he was impeached, and is a hate-mongering misogynist. Let’s stop worrying about salaries at stake and let’s start making decisions for the people, by the people.