A Fox News Pundit Said The Confederate Flag & Pride Flag Are The "Same Thing"

In a segment discussing the deadly violence in Charlottesville, VA.conservative columnist Star Parker said on Fox that the confederate flag and gay pride flag were representations of the same thing. Parker insisted, "[W]hat's really interesting and really incredible irony here is the same people that are demanding that the Confederate flag comes down are the same people that are insisting that the rainbow flag goes up. These two flags represent the exact same thing. "

Parker's remarks were in response to a Fox News host's question about Democrats' criticism of President Donald Trump initial statement about the Charlottesville incident, which failed to condemn white supremacists. Trump had criticized the "hatred and violence on many sides" in a speech that many considered lackluster.

Trump did eventually criticize racist extremists on Monday, two days after a suspected white supremacist allegedly plowed a car into counter-protestors at the so-called "Unite the Right" rally. (The suspect James A. Foley Jr. supposedly drove the car that killed 32-year-old counter-protestor Heather Heyer.) “Racism is evil,” Trump said initially. “And those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.”

On Fox News, Parker defended Trump's initial "many sides" statement on Charlottesville as sufficient. (Trump himself also reportedly thought so, according to a report by the Associated Press.) "On Saturday, there were two sides that were in an American city that were — then it was escalating very rapidly. No, the question became then, well, do you denounce the one part of it?" said Parker, who founded the so-called Urban Cure, a NGO that offers "conservative answers on unique areas of urban poverty, federal entitlements, and market-based solutions."

The rainbow gay pride flag — which is commonly understood as a message of acceptance and even used in some cases to suggest acceptance along the lines of race and religion, among other line of identity — signifies that "certain people — groups are not welcome here," according to Parker.

To her, the gay pride flag signals a breach of other Americans' First Amendment rights: "If [Democratic House Minority Leader] Nancy Pelosi wants to say that we're going to start shutting down First Amendment rights of a certain group of people, then what happens the next time that the homosexuals want to walk through an American city and protest and counter protesters come out?"