An Ohio House committee has rejected a proposed amendment banning the sale and display of the Confederate flag at county fairs.
Ohio Public Radio's Jo Ingles reports.
Democratic Representative Juanita Brent wanted to add the amendment to a bill that allows county fairs to hold events during the COVID19 pandemic. She told the House Agriculture Committee other states have banned the sale and display of the Confederate flag at their county fairs and said there’s no reason for Ohio not to follow suit.
“If we were talking about putting something inside of a museum, I would gladly put this flag inside of a museum because we could all learn from the history of our country. But to be selling it, distributing it, to be putting it up in the places that we love going to which is our county fairs, our independent fairs, when the state fair has not allowed it since 2015, we should make, have our county fairs fall in line with this.”
But Republicans cited the need for county fairs to maintain local control. And Republican Representative Don Jones said the debate over banning flags at county fairs could be held later and should be expanded to all flags.
“We’ve got a lot of enemies of our country. And I just don’t know that this is the appropriate bill, the appropriate time. If we are going to ban flags, I think we ban all of those flags, not just one.”
Republican committee chair Kyle Koehler cut off debate over the issue against the objections from Brent.
Interchange here
The amendment was rejected with majority Republicans voting to table it and Democratic members voting to adopt it.
