They almost had me.

As the authors and defenders of a plan to ban most flags in Anne Arundel County Public Schools talked about how mean people had been to them, how disrespectful of their right to dissent, I started to lean their way. Some critics have been rude, disrespectful and misleading.

Nobody likes being called “Christo-fascist” or “white supremacist.” Feelings have been hurt. Insults have been tossed around willy-nilly in a plot to divide us, not to unite under the good ol’ stars and stripes.

Then, Anne Arundel County Board of Education President Joanna Tobin rapped my knuckles with a yardstick of common sense: “The source of divisiveness is not those who are struggling for their humanity in the face of racism and bigotry.”

She said this at the end of a long school board discussion last week, one in which words were spilled by the bucketload for and against the policy change proposed by Corine Frank, a board member from Pasadena who also is the executive director of the Maryland Republican Party. Now amended to allow the personal display of buttons, pins and patches featuring flag designs, her proposal comes up for a final vote on July 12.

“It is not hate,” Frank said, “to disagree with an ideology.”

“Please tell me how students — students who disagree with the ideology of a flag — are expected to feel if they dissent?”

The draft policy would encourage the display of the Maryland state, Anne Arundel County and city of Annapolis flags, in addition to the American flag that is flown, but limit the showing of other flags to occasions with a bona fide educational purpose as determined by the principal or a designee.

As I mentioned, it’s a compelling argument. What if you disagree with the idea of respect for those represented by POW/MIA flags? What if, merde, the French really piss you off with their inflated Frenchiness and then you see a tricolour in French class?

Quelle horreur!

So, let’s take the Fourth of July to think this through, shall we? It’s the best day to think about liberty, patriotism and symbols such as flags.

There are 6,150 classrooms in Anne Arundel County Public Schools, and every single one has its very own Old Glory. Some classrooms have Maryland flags. There are probably some Mexican flags in Spanish class.

And, yes, Ms. Frank, there are some rainbow flags representing the LGBTQ community, and Black Lives Matter banners that show concern for the many unarmed Black citizens who’ve been killed by police officers.

Here’s the difference.

Every day, students in these classrooms — and in every classroom across Maryland, and 47 other states — begin their day by pledging allegiance to one flag, just one. Students can either recite some or all 31 of the words in the Pledge of Allegiance. Or, they can remain silent out of respect.

It ain’t the maple leaf flag of Canada, folks.

No one — not one little child too cosseted to cope with the notion that people are equal regardless of whom they love, or what gender they identify with — is required to pledge themselves to a rainbow flag, also known as the pride flag.

So it was with some irony that the first person to comment in this discussion Wednesday was a member of the public who mistakenly thought a change to the rule requiring the pledge on the agenda — updating to match language changed by the state — was a proposal to end the custom recited or endured by 80,000-plus kids every school day in this county.

No, John. No one is trying to stop the pledge.

But you would be forgiven for thinking it was such a momentous idea, given some of the rhetoric Wednesday.

“Hang your flags on your car, your house, your person, wherever you feel it will make a difference for you,” board member Melissa Ellis said. “I just question whether on classroom walls in a place that needs to be safe for all students is the right place.”

Asking questions like that drew applause from the audience, stacked with people who were waving the U.S. flag outside the school board’s headquarters on Riva Road just before the meeting. To be fair, there were rainbow flag wavers, across the street, too. They did some of their own cheering in front of the board.

One of them just might have sneezed.

Achoo.

“I ask for civility,” board member Michelle Corkadel told the critics.

Sorry, what was that?

“I am very, very disappointed.”

If this is confusing to you, it was to me, too. Corkadel kept removing her glasses and rolling her eyes as she criticized other board members and the audience for their rudeness in not letting her make her point.

It was hard to hear exactly what the interruption was. It sounded like a sneeze or a cough. Maybe it was the kind you heard in high school when kids disguised a coarse word for horse manure in a cough.

But it was just the silliest example of the costume that supporters of this proposal are trying on for size. They’re claiming the mantle of victimhood, of being portrayed as the bad guys, of fighting efforts to silence them. They believe no one is giving them the respect they deserve.

“It is the sad parody of free speech for some while shutting down the folks who paid for this building and every wall where these flags would be hung,” Frank said.

That sure doesn’t sound like anyone is shutting her down.

My guess is that this proposal will fail, just as it did earlier this year at the County Council, when the walls at county government buildings were the issue. But that won’t end it.

All seven board seats are up for election next year. A student member, one of the few in the nation with full voting rights, is selected for a one-year term by a coalition of student councils.

The use of this issue as a symbol will cut both ways. Dana Schallheim, a board member from Severna Park, is the only person to file for the election so far. She has been outspoken in her criticism of Frank’s proposal, saying it wasn’t worth the board’s time. That didn’t stop her from unsuccessfully trying to amend it beyond recognition and engage supporters over its merits.

“We’re going to take this paragraph by paragraph, sentence by sentence,” she said.

There were 1,600 written comments submitted to the board before Wednesday’s meetings, from opponents and defenders of Frank’s proposal. Almost every TV station in Baltimore and Washington has covered the topic. Heck, even the Baltimore City communist party has a take.

Moms for Liberty, a national conservative group that opposes recognition of the LGBTQ community in schools, sees this for what it is — a political opportunity. There were plenty of T-shirts for the group in the school board crowd last week.

No matter what happens, you can bet Moms for Liberty and others will use flags as a campaign symbol for things they dislike about schools. That is what its supporters want above all, to set the terms of the coming election.

But only one side is sure to wrap themselves in the flag and claim to be the victims.

rick.hutzell@thebaltimorebanner.com