Utah’s ban on Pride flags in government buildings and classrooms goes into effect today. But a previous Teacher of the Year has recently shared the clever way that he got around a law banning LGBTQ+ displays in classrooms.

In 2001, Utah passed a sexual education bill that prohibited any classroom instruction on the “advocacy of homosexuality.” The law was broadly used to ban LGBTQ+-inclusive books from school libraries and to prevent educators from opposing anti-LGBTQ+ bullying.

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Utah’s 2021 Teacher of the Year, John Arthur, a teacher at Meadowlark Elementary School in Salt Lake City, recently shared a video on Threads in which he talked about how many of his students laughed when they read the words “gay” and “queer” in the 1900 children’s fantasy book The Wizard of Oz.

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“I was about to say something when my principal, who was observing in the room at the time, shook her head ‘no.’ After the lesson, she told me that there was a law that prohibited me from discussing anything that had to do with gay or queer identities in class, for fear that I might be promoting ‘an alternative lifestyle,'” Arthur said.

The teacher said that he also had a student in his class “who was clearly gay” and who reacted when he heard the other kids’ laughter. So Arthur asked his principal if he could possibly wear a pin or display a flag to show the student some love and support. The principal said no because it was against the law.

When Arthur thought about it late one night, he realized that he could quietly express his support by carrying a “rainbowish assortment” of pens, highlighters, and markers in his pocket. “No one could give me a hard time for wearing a bunch of pens in my pocket,” he said.

“So I came to school the next day with a rainbowish assortment ready to go, and most people made nothing of it, but my boy knew he looked at me, and he knew I was flying the flag just for him,” Arthur said.

In his video, the teacher noted that the aforementioned law was eventually defeated in court, but he added, “Some legislators now want to take us back.”

He then played a video clip of state Rep. Trevor Lee (R), who introduced the Pride flag ban, saying that he hopes the flag ban will fix “problems” in school districts, and adding that, if teachers “push pins and stickers and banners, it’ll be really easy to go back next year” and bad additional items.

“Trevor Lee, I promise, brother, you’re wasting your time,” Arthur said in his video. “Bigotry will never outpace our creativity. The only way to get rid of rainbow flags and all the rest is to make them unnecessary.”

“When all our kids, LGBTQ youth included, get to walk into our classrooms and find themselves celebrated in the books they read, the histories they study, and the stories we tell them, teachers won’t need to fly rainbow flags for them anymore,” he added. “Until then, you can count on teachers continuing to lovingly fight for liberty and justice for all.”

Rep. Lee previously noted that his flag ban would allow classrooms to fly the Confederate and Nazi flags because schools shouldn’t “censor history.” Lee claimed that rainbow flags push political beliefs onto students and create hostility.

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