Jody Serrano
Editor in chiefEditor in Chief at Xataka On. Before joining Webedia, I was a tech reporter at Gizmodo and The Messenger. While I've covered all sorts of things related to technology, I'm specialized in writing about social media, Internet culture, Twitch, and streamers.
In recent years, Texas has been on crusade to outlaw what it considers obscene and unsuitable for children. Besides banning books, lawmakers are currently trying to make selling vibrators at Walmart and even, some fear, watching anime illegal.
But it goes without saying that banning Virginia’s official state flag because it features a female nipple was not on anyone’s bingo card.
Banning the lone nipple. The Lamar Consolidated Independent School District (LCISD), which oversees a group of schools about 30 minutes from Houston, was recently thrust under the national spotlight for banning a lesson featuring the Virginia state flag.
According to Axios, LCISD removed a section about Virginia from its online learning platform for elementary school students last fall because it contained “frontal nudity.” The school district’s decision to restrict the Virginia lesson were revealed by a public records request filed by the Texas Freedom to Read Project, an organization that fights censorship and book bans in the state.
“Today, it's the Virginia state flag. Tomorrow will it be books that contain historical photos or depictions of Holocaust survivors?” the Texas Freedom to Read Project said in a news article. “If adults making and implementing these rules, believe the nudity depicted on the Virginia state flag is prurient or obscene to the point that they must remove elementary school lessons on the state of Virginia, where will this end?”
The Virginia state flag. While Virginia’s state flag does feature a female breast, it’s not meant to send a sexual message. The flag prominently displays the Roman goddess Virtus holding a spear and a sword and standing over a defeated king. Below her are the Latin words "sic semper tyrannis," which basically means “tyrants will always be overthrown.”
Virginia’s seal has included Virtus since 1776, though it hasn’t always featured her showing a breast. In some cases, the goddess has been covered completely and in others, both of her breasts have been exposed. In 1901, Virginia officials ordered for one of Virtus’ breasts to be shown so that it would be clear that she was female.
The current version of Virginia’s flag, which shows one breast, was approved in 1950.
Not all Virginians have seed eye to eye on the decision to show one of Virtus’ breasts. In 2010, for instance, Ken Cuccinelli, the state’s Attorney General at the time, made pins for his staff that covered Virtus. In his version, she wore a full breastplate.
Virginia responses. For their part, Virginia officials have appeared flummoxed over the Texas school district’s decision to ban a lesson about their state over a flag.
“So just to recap: the lesson about defeating tyranny is banned because of a 240-year-old wardrobe choice,” Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Virginia) told The Washington Post. “I’m sure the founders would be relieved to know modesty survived, even if the message didn’t.”
Virginia’s other Democratic senator, Tim Kaine, wondered what exactly was so objectionable to the people in the Lamar school district. “Did they object to a bare breast? Or to the critique of tyranny?” he said in an X post.
An increase in bans on “obscene” materials. The Virginia state flag isn’t the only questionable object that’s been outlawed in recent months. Over in Idaho, a new public indecency law banned “truck nuts,” which are fake balls meant to resemble testicles that truck owners hang on the backs of their vehicles.
The Idaho law applies in public places and in any place where there is someone offended by the display. By these standards, it’s anyone’s guess what lawmakers will try to ban next.
When it comes to the Virginia state flag, Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia, pointed out that there a lot more public places where full frontal nudity is shown.
“Do the kids ever go on a field trip to a museum? I mean, really, you’re going to see naked bodies, not just a breast,” Sabado said, according to the Post. “We’re going back to the ’50s, except I think it’s the 1850s instead of the 1950s.”
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