Decatur abuzz over flipped flag
Greg Townsend is an intense man, with a gaze that seems to cut through you, who leaves no room for misunderstanding about where he stands.
On the wall of his tire business in Decatur, he has a large picture of a baby, and beneath, in large letters, it says, “Kill her now and it’s called murder. Kill her three months ago and it’s abortion.”
A window between the service bays and the waiting area is covered in bumper stickers carrying anti-abortion and anti-gun control messages.
Every piece of mail that leaves the business contains what is called a Christian tract, a little pamphlet with a Christian message.
From time to time, all this has created some friction with customers. Some have told him not to put the tracts in their bills, Townsend says. He tells them not to charge things, then they won’t get a bill, because every bill that goes out is going to have a tract in it.
None of this attracted much attention until, shortly after Tuesday’s election, Townsend hoisted the flag, which has long flown in front of his shop, in the upside-down position, a distress signal protesting the election of Barack Obama and Joseph Biden.
It didn’t take long for the reaction to come. A 17-year employee told Townsend he was quitting. The phone calls started, about 300 in the past few days.
Almost all have been in support, Townsend said, but some clearly weren’t. Shortly after noon Friday, a woman called to raise hell with the employee who answered. There was no mistaking what the call was about.
No, the female employee said, it has nothing to do with the fact that Obama is black. It’s about abortion. Obama is a supporter of abortion, and the business owner is absolutely opposed to it, period.
The call dragged on for several minutes, and it wasn’t friendly.
Then Townsend, who had been tied up on another call, hung up and explained himself.
Some have protested that flying the flag upside down is a desecration, but it’s not, he says, and firmly so, pointing to a printout of flag regulations.
An upside-down flag is a distress signal, indicating that people’s lives or property are in danger. With the election of Obama and Biden, lives are in danger: all the unborn babies that will die as the result of abortion.
And property is at stake. The recent bailout wasn’t a bailout of the American people, he said. It was the bailout of a bankrupt and foreign-owned Federal Reserve system.
Complaints that the upside-down flag is a racist protest irritate Townsend. It isn’t about Obama’s color, he says.
“People can’t separate out race from other issues,” he says. “His color has nothing to do with it.” It’s about issues: abortion and economic principles.
A lot of people might disagree with him, Townsend said, but they haven’t bothered to call. They know what his beliefs are. One can understand why some might be reluctant to call. Townsend is not a timid man about these issues.
But the mayor of Decatur, John Schultz, did call. He’d been out of town and returned Friday afternoon to a pile of angry messages from residents.
“We had a pretty one-sided conversation. I did all the talking,” Schultz said. He said he told Townsend he was not happy at all, that he was offended by the protest and concerned that it portrays the community in the wrong way. Obama and Biden were elected by the American public, and by a large margin, and he just has to accept it.
Originally, Townsend said, he planned to keep the flag in the upside-down position as long as Obama is in office, but that was overkill, he decided.
“I’ve said my peace,” he said. Out of respect for his employees, who have caught some flak, and out of his respect for friends and veterans who may disagree with him, he decided to take the flag down.
“I definitely stirred the town up,” he said, as though he’d stuck a stick in a beehive. “I don’t want to be upsetting people. I made my point.”
So the flag that has flown for 37 years, since he got out of the Navy after serving in Vietnam, has come down, and he won’t fly it again, he said.
If you had dropped by the Auburn Auction Park a few days ago, you would have seen the general manager and chief financial officer on their hands and knees painting the big stage where autos are displayed when they come up for sale.