Milwaukee made national news again last week. It had nothing to do with the 2020 Democratic Convention, either. Rather, it was about us, the LGBTQ community, or, more specifically a couple, Kevin Kollmann and Merle Malterer, representing all of us. It seems that on Thursday, March 28, Bieck Management, landlord of a quaint Oak Creek subdivision, delivered a letter to the pair, its tenants, ordering them to remove a rainbow flag from their rental property porch.
The couple’s flag, which in homage to our national emblem bears the traditional star-studded canton with stripes in rainbow colors rather than red and white, was ordered to be taken down because, according to their landlord, displaying flags on the property is forbidden under the terms of their lease. Furthermore, the letter demanded the flag’s removal within five days. Non-compliance, it warned, would result in their eviction.
It should be mentioned that the same couple received a similar notice months ago. That incident was over a Green Bay Packers flag. Our duo presumed the nature of the flag had something to do with the order. Perhaps it could be somehow construed as a commercial endorsement (or perhaps the landlord was a Bears fan?). Either way, they dutifully took down the Packer flag. They raised the rainbow flag some months later.
Another letter promptly arrived and demanded its removal citing their lease agreement. The problem is, the lease makes no mention of a ban of flags whatsoever. Besides, other apartment porches are festooned with flags, and those tenants did not receive a letter demanding their removal. In fact, one man, interviewed on a TV segment, explained he had been flying his for years and had never been asked to remove it. In his case, the fluttering flag is a typical American one, albeit in severely distressed condition, its fly end frayed, and the individual stripes separated down to the canton, reminiscent of a battle-scarred standard from Iwo Jima. By comparison, the targeted tenants’ rainbow ensign is bright and fresh. So it clearly wasn’t a matter of an obsession with pristine property appearance.
Bieck Management, however, adamantly insisted the complaint was not discrimination. However, according to the tenants, it offered no plausible defense for this selective enforcement of what appeared to be a non-existent regulation. Then what, pray tell, could it be? It certainly seems an odd coincidence that this couple has been singled out for non-infractions while other flags, tattered as they might be, continue to fly unfurled. Meanwhile, Messrs. Malterer and Kollmann argued their flag represents their pride in their country and their LGBTQ identity.
This situation is nothing new. Cases have cropped up in Milwaukee and across the country with the ACLU often representing the tenants. Usually, it turns out that a landlord has interpreted a lease maintenance clause too broadly. But these efforts have failed on various grounds, especially when it is clear that rainbow flags are the only ones that elicit complaint. Inevitably, tenants win. Then, in a deus ex machina moment, or perhaps in the face of bad press bursting in air, the landlord rescinded the eviction threat and our rainbow flag does yet wave, gallantly streaming.
