Reading mayor under fire after calling off LGBTQ Pride flag raising at City Hall

Just minutes before the City of Reading was expected to raise a rainbow LGBTQ Pride flag for the first time in front of City Hall on Monday, the event was abruptly called off by the mayor.

A member of Mayor Wally Scott’s staff said he doesn’t support flying flags there that represent “political movements.” His decision made national headlines and caused a local outcry just days before this weekend’s LGBTQ Pride festival there.

LGBTQ leaders in Reading have slammed the move as “blatant, unacceptable discrimination,” and Ben Renkus, the head of the Reading Pride Celebration, said he filed a complaint against Scott with the city’s Human Relations Commission, which protects people from discrimination, including that based on sexual orientation.

Scott could not be reached, and members of the city council declined requests for comment Thursday. But City Council President Jeffrey S. Waltman Sr. told the Reading Eagle Tuesday that the mayor “stated he supports the group, the cause, but had concerns about raising the flag." Acting Managing Director Osmer Deming also told the newspaper: “The mayor’s position is that he does not support flags being up that support political movements and he views that as a political movement."

Scott repeated that sentiment Monday evening when he was confronted on the sidewalk by two constituents who asked him about the decision and livestreamed their interaction.

“Last year, somebody came and wanted to hang a Confederate flag, and I said no,” Scott told them. “Somebody wanted to hang the 4/20 flag, whatever that was. I didn’t do it. Everybody has a mission, or whatever they’re doing, a movement. And I don’t get involved in movements.” (Marijuana enthusiasts use “4/20” as a shorthand for their movement.)

Kathiria Zorrilla, the 21-year-old from Reading who filmed the confrontation, said the mayor’s decision to call off the flag-raising was “heartbreaking.”

“The LGBT flag, to me, gives me hope that I’m not alone,” Zorrilla said. “[Scott] not letting the flag be raised is telling me I am not welcome in this city. It tells other LGBT people they do not belong here.”

In a statement, organizers of Reading’s Pride Celebration said they were preparing for the flag-raising event, but then “we were told that the mayor just minutes before notified city officials that the flag raising was not happening because flag represents a political cause.” The Pride organizers argue that the flag represents “a people, a community actively involved and incorporated in the greater community as citizens of Reading and Berks County.”

“We are angry and disappointed,” they wrote, “that our beloved city and the support that we have received over the past years has been tainted by a single person.”

The LGBT Center of Greater Reading released a statement saying that “we are not a cause. We are human beings protected by an anti-discrimination ordinance in the City of Reading.”

“What was supposed to be a proud and historical moment in history," they wrote, “turned into a show of blatant, unacceptable discrimination.”

Two different Pride flags flew in June at the Pennsylvania Capitol: the Transgender Flag and the Philadelphia Pride flag, the latter of which is a rainbow flag that includes black and brown stripes, representing LGBTQ people of color. Those flags were ordered up by Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, who on Wednesday called on Scott to reconsider.

Philadelphia has raised a rainbow flag for Pride outside City Hall for more than two decades.

Scott, a Democrat, won’t serve a second term after losing to a primary opponent in May.