Utah’s flag officially got an upgrade this month and I couldn’t be happier. The new banner features a large, golden beehive in a blue hexagon over three horizontal stripes representing the state’s red rocks, white mountains and blue skies. It succeeds the old design, which was primarily the state’s seal on a blue background — an approach emulated by about 23 other states. More on that later.
The new design had to survive a challenge from a relatively small group of unhappy residents displeased that the old design was being demoted (but not eliminated). Despite the group’s claims of erasure, the old flag remains the state’s historic flag and people can fly whichever flag they choose. Additionally, the state seal that the old flag is based on remains as-is.
The residents against the new flag twice attempted to gather enough signatures to force a vote, but fell considerably short of their goal both times. While I appreciate their democratic efforts, I felt the proposal would undo a compromise to keep both flags in favor of solely the older design. Hence why I called the proposal from Restore Utah’s Flag as “Heads, we win. Tails, you lose.”
The old flag would have survived as a state symbol no matter what, so they didn’t really have anything to lose:
- Had the measure succeeded, the old flag would’ve been the sole flag.
- Had the measure failed, the old flag remains an official flag in addition to the new design.
Truly a win-win for supporters of the old flag. Not so much for everyone else.
Had the proposal passed, the state would’ve lost out on what is arguably a better way to represent the state (in flag form).
With that said, the new flag probably wouldn’t have entirely gone away had the Restore Utah’s Flag effort succeeded and voters had excised the new banner as an official state symbol. Even before the new banner officially became the state flag this month, the design was becoming widely adopted. I’m fairly sure that the design would’ve thrived even without the state’s imprimatur.
After the Utah Legislature approved the new design last year, I began thinking about ways to incorporate the banner in the team attire of the Oval Curling Club. Many sports uniforms feature the flag of the state or province they hail from (think of Baltimore Ravens and their embrace of the Maryland state flag in their logos).
My curling club is undergoing a rebranding and I took the opportunity to design a logo that incorporated the new Utah flag. I also designed a variation that depicted a curling stone as a beehive in the blue hexagon. I’ll be forthright here and note that the club’s members seem to prefer the original beehive version over the curling stone beehive.
I was honored when the club members voted for the designs to be the new logos for the club (more on that in a future blog post).
I wouldn’t have jumped at the opportunity to incorporate the old flag into the club’s logo or uniforms. At most, it could’ve been used as a shoulder patch.
Challenging the new standard
Over the past year or so, it’s been interesting to see the arguments about why the new flag was a harbinger of the end of civilization and the only way to stave off this chaos was to have the old flag be the only official state flag. Every few days, I would search Twitter for “Utah flag” to keep up on the hyperbole.
Defenders of the old flag touted the difficulty in adjusting the design for other purposes as a feature, not a defect. They lamented that people jumped on the opportunity to remix the new flag design for fun or to make a point.
It has been popular since the new design was introduced last year to replace the beehive with another symbol, like a popular whale sculpture on display in a Salt Lake City roundabout. Others changed the flag colors to represent LGBTQ+ identities, which generated ire (although it must be pointed out that people could also put the old flag over a rainbow background or the like, but most never really bothered to before).
Expressing outrage at the possibility of a symbol being embraced and remixed by non-traditional groups was one of the tactics frequently deployed by proponents of the old flag. Other posts on social media asserted that the new flag (approved by the heavily Republican Legislature) was somehow Marxist or an attempt to erase history — which doesn’t make sense when the old flag still has official status.
Another argument was against the $500,000 cost for the new flag proposal (which has already been spent, to the best of my knowledge). It was primarily for outreach efforts — most of the flag replacement costs weren’t included in this figure because groups would simply get a banner with the new design when their old flags needed to be swapped out due to wear and tear.
A half million is a hefty sum for you or me, but it’s 0.0017% of the state’s $29.4 billion annual budget or about 14 cents per Utahn.
Speaking of costs, many heritage flag opponents ignored or justified the cost of running the petition for a public vote. Setting aside all the money and effort that the signature gathered expended, county agencies needed to spend money to verify petitions (which admittedly is part of their jobs).
Had a special election been called as it would’ve been under the original effort, the cost of that would’ve been in the millions (which is more than a half million). Spending millions to fight a half-million dollar expenditure seems like the textbook definition of cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face.
Ultimately, I don’t have any reason to doubt the sincerity of the heritage flag proponents, but many of the arguments put forward seemed breathlessly disingenuous.
At the same time, some of the critiques of the new flag’s design seemed valid — appreciating design can be largely subjective despite efforts by flag enthusiasts to apply some objective guidelines (which some then try to apply far too rigidly). It’s kind of funny when some call the new flag as being overly corporate — many big corporations are deemphasizing logos in favor of quirky wordmarks.
Even if the new flag isn’t perfect, it certainly seems like an improvement.
The ol’ SOB (seal on a bedsheet)
Prior to the current flag fervor, I didn’t give too much thought to Utah’s flag. It was always a bit ho-hum and I never owned a copy of it. I did buy one once — as part of a fundraiser for the now-defunct Southern California Curling Center in Vernon, California.
The curling center had asked people to buy a flag to represent their state, nation or province in the new facility. I hesitated making the purchase — I didn’t particularly care for the flag, but I ultimately contributed because I wanted to ensure that Utah was represented at the unique sport facility just south of downtown Los Angeles. I was also supposed to get a curling center nametag with my name and the flag, but the facility closed before that came to pass.
At the time I was making the donation in 2021, there was buzz about changing Utah’s flag. There was a flag to commemorate the 125th anniversary of Utah’s statehood, but I was ambivalent about that design too — the banner was divided into red, white and blue quadrants that resembled an “X” underneath a circle featuring the beehive. It just didn’t work for me.
In any case, I donated for the old Utah flag and I told myself I would be happy to buy a new flag to replace it whenever that came to pass.
When I finally made my way to Southern California to visit the curling center in January 2022, I tried to spot Utah’s flag on the giant wall with all the flags. It took me quite a while to locate it, even after I figured out that the state flags were displayed alphabetically.
My inability to find Utah’s flag in the pack of U.S. flags underscored one of the biggest complaints of the historic flag — as a symbol that should clearly identify the state it represents, the Utah seal on a blue background didn’t do a very good job.
There’s so much meaning in the old flag – like HATU and 6981!
Defenders of the historic flag often like to point out all of the symbolism in the design, such as a bald eagle, American flags, bees about the beehive and sego lily flowers (which apparently helped stave off hunger during the state’s pioneer era).
All of these symbols are well and good (and survive on the state seal), but it’s extremely hard to appreciate the symbology when you’re looking at a flag a hundred feet away. At such a distance, it’s easy to miss details — such as a mistake on the placement of the year Mormon settlers first arrived.
That error wasn’t officially fixed until 2011, or 89 years after the goof was first committed (basically the year 1847 was supposed to be on the shield, but the original text of the law was easy to misinterpret and the year was placed below the shield to appear as if it were behind it).
Also, writing on a flag is generally considered to be a bad idea (although there are always exceptions to this guidance, like California’s flag). Utah’s historic flag is an excellent example of this, as it will be seen as backwards about 50% of the time when it’s on a flagpole.
As much as one might draw meaning from the words “Utah” and “Industry” and the years 1847 and 1896, what meaning can be gleaned from “Hatu” or “Yrtsudni”?
Some historic flag defenders will point out that it doesn’t matter that people can’t pick out Utah’s blue flag among dozens of other blue flags — in Utah, it will likely be the only blue flag flying. I suppose that consideration may also apply to all the symbolism on the flag — it doesn’t matter if few people can see it well enough to appreciate the intricate details, it’s enough to just know it’s there.
At the same time, is it fair to ask the general public to automatically know, understand and appreciate all the old flag’s intricate symbols when they’re difficult to make out at a distance?
Demanding a flag plebiscite when it had never been done before
Wrapping things up, I found it fascinating to see some demand a public vote on the new flag. I wasn’t necessarily opposed to the idea (despite the format heavily favoring the heritage flag), but insisting that the vote was absolutely necessary for a state symbol seemed to be a bit too much.
Some heritage flag supporters asserted that a public vote had been promised, but that isn’t my recollection of the process.
The state flag has been changed repeatedly over 121 years. (Utah didn’t really have a state flag for the first quarter-century of statehood, and early flags were typically one-offs until around 1921, according to a very thorough Deseret News article on the history of the state flag.)
There was never a public vote on any of the changes.
Also, Utah has 28 or so official state symbols. To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a plebiscite on any of them. As a curler, I demand a recount on making skiing and snowboarding the official state winter sports.
Many of the state’s symbols were adopted by the Legislature when school groups appealed to them to make the change (often as part of a lesson on how laws are passed at the state level).
In that regard, the new state flag has also provided a civics lesson — even if some people weren’t exactly civil about it. Having two state flags that residents can choose to fly was probably the best outcome of this process.
Both will be likely used more often than many of Utah’s other symbols, including the official state tartan.
