A Storied Gay-Pride Flag Doubles Down Outside FPC as Veterans Lead Protest of Student Leader’s Suspension

It was foggy, the light still tentative, the question valid: LGBTQ demonstrators in Flagler as elsewhere tend to be magnets for counter-demonstrators who think nothing of taunting, intimidating, abusing or threatening their targets. Then came the reassuring voice: “I think you’re here for us.”

It was the voice of Mark Ebenhoch, 63, a 23-year Marine veteran, retired, who, together with fellow-veteran Eric Golnick took note of the two-and-a-half-day suspension of FPC student-leader Jack Petocz last Thursday after a “Say Gay” walk-out denouncing a pending Florida law that would make it illegal for teachers to discuss sexual orientation and gender identity with students in certain grades, and could potentially out non-conforming students. (The Florida Senate passed the bill this morning. It is now awaiting the governor’s signature.) Ebenhoch decided to hold a Stand-With-Jack demonstration of his own. He drove 10 hours from Key West, where he lives. Golnick, who runs a mental health company for veterans and first responders, flew down from Washington, D.C. Others came from Jacksonville and of course Palm Coast and surrounding areas.

“We got incensed by the fact that these kids’ First Amendment rights are trying to be curtailed. Staff, teachers, school employees are going to be throttled by this, and these kids standing up for it–and then to be disciplined for doing that, incense us very much so,” Ebenoch said. By “us” he meant friends and fellow-veterans. “We came at this not only from an LGBT standpoint, we came at it as a veteran standpoint. The fact that we all took an oath of enlistment to defend the constitutional rights of Americans against all foreign enemies. And the key word here is domestic enemies. When we have the Legislature in the state of Florida, curtailing First Amendment rights, I’m sorry, I don’t care what kind of veteran you are or what kind of American you are. That is wrong. Period. We do not curtail speech rights. If people want to curtail speech rights, they can go move to Russia, where they can’t say anything. But we have the rights in this country to do so. And so these kids are defending their rights. We’re standing right here with them.”

Golnick was more explicit: “To be perfectly frank, it pissed me off right? From the First Amendment standpoint, from a constitutional standpoint,” he said, “the fact that he got suspended from school for speaking his mind, in fact, they’re being this heavy handed about it.” He said this was a pretty unique case from what he was observing across the county. “And if we don’t stand up for these kids who’s gonna stand up for these kids?” (Flagler County schools drew national attention only weeks ago in another aberrance when School Board member Jill Woolbright filed a criminal complaint against her own superintendent, falsely accusing her of allowing the dissemination of “porn” in school libraries. Woolbright was seeking to ban several books, and has so far succeeded in at least one case.)




By the time the sun was burning through the fog, and as students and buses were beginning to arrive at school for the 8’oclock bell, 30 people had gathered along the sidewalk, their rainbow-pride colors radiating from socks, from shirts, from signs, and from an enormous rainbow flag that needed a dozen people to hold up. It’s Section 93 of the Key West Sea to Sea Flag, a flag once reputed to be the longest on the planet–1.25 miles (Kuwait broke that record a few years ago, by a few feet, though not with an LGBTQ flag, which could, as at FPC, get Kuwaitis disciplined). Ebenoch had brought it from Key West. That same Section 93 of the pride flag has a storied history: it robed the U.S. Supreme Court steps as it hear key cases on gay rights, and it is unfurled every year in Orlando to commemorate the massacre of 49 people at Pulse, the gay nightclub, in 2016. The Sea to Sea flag first billowed in a 2003 Key West commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the flag itself.

There was a notable absence: Petocz. The absence was intentional. “Jack is in spirit with us,” Cameron Driggers, a junior, friend and associate of Petocz’s, said. Petocz was due back in school this morning. He was meeting with the principal this morning, and was not at the demonstration because he was lowering his profile a tad. Somehow Driggers, who took part in Thursday’s walkout wrapped in a rainbow flag, and featured that way in photographes that appeared in media, was spared punishment or suspension by the administration.

It’s not as if Petocz’s leadership and message haven’t resonated across campus and, clearly, beyond, considering the veterans’ protest today. At school, Driggers said, “it’s really something you know, students are angry for Jack, there’s actually flyers left on walls that say ‘Bring Back Jack,'” Driggers said, and a petition that’s madse its way around the globe has accumulated 7,000 signatures. “I mean, it got a lot of traction. Obviously, a lot of it was started with from people in our community in our school, but it started being tweeted, tweeted out by different reporters and different influencers.”

Driggers has known Petocz since fifth grade when they were at Rymfire, then at Indian Trails Middle School, and now at FPC. They’ve always been into politics. Even in elementary school they’d have mock debates: we’ve always wanted to express ourselves politically and, you know, critically think about the world. And that’s always been something that we’ve had to combat our schools with, would dress up as Bernie Sanders, Petocz would dress up as–brace yourselves–Donald Trump. Petocz was still on the reactionary-conservative side back then. He’s evolved since (he was the featured speaker at the Palm Coast Democratic Club last Thursday, an appearance that had been scheduled well before that day’s suspension). All along, Driggers says, the pair has faced resistance from school administrators when it came to their political expression. “We’ve always wanted to express ourselves politically and, you know, critically think about the world. And that’s always been something that we’ve had to combat our schools with,” Driggers said.




Today’s demonstration was a matter of solidarity between parents and students, Driggers said. But he wants the administration to be more inclusive, too. “I think I think there’s a lot of work that can be done from our administration,” Driggers said, noting that on Thursday, Jeff Reaves, the principal at Matanzas walked with the 270-some students who took part in the walkout there. (Reaves explained: “I was amongst them, mostly making sure students were respectful and honoring each other,” and that he would step in and out of the march to monitor the situation. He said there were no out of school suspensions there.)

“I think that’s exactly what administration should be doing with their students–not punishing them, not silencing,” Cameron continued, “everything they do to is to minimize and, you know, just make it go away, which is what a principals [Greg] Schwartz strived to do with his administration. That’s the first thing. And this also applies to the Flagler County School Board. Superintendent [Cathy] Mittelstadt actually instructed our principal to disallow the flags because they are a political statement. And I said earlier, to tell a community of people that their flag is a political statement is just beyond insulting.”

There appears to be little awareness about the origin and ramifications of the pride flag in the way the district is imposing its no-flag rule. The original flag was designed by artist and drag queen Gilbert Baker in 1978 at the urging of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in the United States. Milk, mayor of San Francisco, was assassinated in his office by Dan White, who was lionized by police and conservatives and described by his lawyer at trial as a man who was “endowed with and believed very strongly in the traditional American values, family and home.” Jerry Falwell on his Old Time Gospel Hour TV show, if not reveling in the assassination, warned that the “people of San Francisco had better awake to the fact that the judgement, the wrath that is falling upon the city, is of divine origin.” Months before Milk’s assassination the flag had flown over San Francisco City Hall the day of a gay-pride parade. By 1994, it had become the symbol of the movement.




The district’s approach is that all flags, including confederate, MAGA and pride flags, are banned, to avoid controversy or confrontations (such as the one that took place at the end of the walkout at FPC). Several protesters today rejected the comparison between the confederate flag and the pride flag, calling the confederate flag a symbol of hate and the pride flag a symbol of unity. But all three–including Driggers, Ebenoch and Mike Cocchiola, a local retiree active in Democratic Party politics, said all flags should be allowed, at least in certain contexts such as marches and protests.

“A flag is free speech. And if they want to fly a confederate flag, fine,” Ebenoch said. “I look at them and say Screw you, I know what the confederacy is about, and that’s who you are. Fine. I’m good with that. I don’t like the flag. But I’m not going to curtail your right to do so. And that’s any other flag, period. So I know they lumped the the LGBT flag into this kind of stuff because they don’t want controversy. Well, controversy is free speech. That’s that’s what we’ve done in this country since it was formed. So therefore, you’re curtailing that. You don’t want these rules, no flags at all. I’m sorry. I stand by the American flag. I stand by the gay flag. I stand by any other flag that somebody wants. I may not like it. But that’s our right as an American, is to be able to do something or say something somebody may not like. But we fought for the right to be able to say it.”

Cocchiola, who often speaks before local government boards, said rules are necessary. But so are nuance and realism in an educational environment. Students should not be disruptive, he said. “But the school has to understand that there are divisions in the country, there are things that are happening and they have to recognize that students are future leaders and they need to engage. But I understand there also has to be some kind of rules. You can’t just disrupt the entire school system. So to me, the school system, whether it’s the superintendent, the principal, whatever, they just simply overreacted to this. They just simply overreacted.”




I mean, I don’t think the students on any song should be disrupted. But the school has to understand that there are divisions in the country there are things are happening and they have to recognize that students are future leaders and they need to engage. But I understand there also has to be some kind of rules. You can’t just disrupt the entire school system. So to me, the school system whether it’s the superintendent, the principal, whatever, I just simply overreacted to this. They just simply overreacted. And for that they suspended students.”

On the approach of 8 o’clock students began leaving to get to class, and others began leaving to get to work. They’d been caroled by many a passing beep and horn and hardly any foul displays or insults hurled from speeding wheels. The closest presence of any police was a sheriff’s deputy parked out of sight at the Wawa parking lot (in contrast with Thursday’s walkout at FPC, when students reported six to eight deputies on campus). The ubiquitous Janet McDonald, the school board member who’d inappropriately crashed an SAT testing site to, DeSantis-like before DeSantis, heckle students to take off their masks (requiring the College Board to re-offer testing to any student who wished at a later date), and who crashed Thursday’s walkout at FPC–not as a participant, but as a judge and would-be disciplinarian–somehow did not materialize, at least nowhere in sight.