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To the Editor:
One of the STAR’s most frequent letter writers, Mr. Nave’s latest contribution is filled with “stones thrown” (I hope he is without sin to be casting so many) and outright falsehoods. It just boggles the mind what people accept as fact and often cloak in and hike behind Scripture.
Mr. Nave quotes a Pastor Grider as saying President Biden and his Secretary of State are promoting/encouraging flying the rainbow (LGBTQ) flag beneath the American flag over our embassies throughout the world and the Black Lives Matter flag over U.S. embassies here. Some simple fact-checking will reveal just how exaggerated these claims to be.
He goes on to say that members of the BLM movement are “Marxists dedicated to making American communist.” J. Edgar Hoover, the former head of the FBI (who also relentlessly pursued homosexuals and eventually was exposed as a cross-dressing homosexual himself) said the same thing about Dr. Marin Luther King and those involved with voting rights and equality.
In reality the BLM movement is protesting specific, but all too often, instances of excessive force on the part of law enforcement, with little or no accountability.
Extreme nationalism and religious bigotry have caused more atrocities and miseries throughout history than all other movements combined. Wrapping oneself in the flag (of any country) and quoting Scripture that only promotes one’s own agenda, prejudice and hate, are things that only knowledge and education can combat and throw light on some very dark places in the country. Hatred and bigotry must be called out and be made accountable because as Dr. King said, “To ignore evil is to become an accomplice to it.” Silence truly is complicity.
So yes, fly the flag proudly because it represents the sacrifice that so many Americans have made and because it also represents our best ideals and as Abraham Lincoln said as the Civil War ended, it “represents the Better Angels of ourselves.” We must continually strive “to form a more perfect union.” We owe no less to those who have gone before us.

Susan J. Peters
Elizabethton