The Winchester Planning Commission voted 4-2 to drop the Pledge of Allegiance out of its bylaws.
Commissioner Leesa Mayfield, who opposed the proposal to add the pledge to the bylaws, said, as reported by The Winchester Star, that Planning Commission Chairman Beau Correll “has been rewriting the bylaws unilaterally.”
“He was working with commissioners one on one to discuss the changes that he was proposing, including some changes that we might have individually suggested as well,” Mayfield said. “When he brought up to me beforehand about the Pledge of Allegiance, I was like, ‘Is that really necessary?’ And he said, ‘Well, Commissioner [Sandra] Bloom also had some hesitation with this addition as well.'”
“The Pledge of Allegiance has an importance, of course,” she added. “But the need to recite it at the beginning of every city meeting in a performative way seems unnecessary.”
Correll said he was “shocked” by the decision.
“While we do not presently say the Pledge of Allegiance in our meetings, we certainly should, and I thought this would be a very uncontroversial measure,” he wrote on Facebook. “For example, the Frederick County Planning Commission right beside us – where I attended as the liaison yesterday – not only recites the Pledge, but also opens with an invocation.”
“To hear such a basic concept of our American way of life called ‘pageantry,’ labeled ‘unnecessary,’ or treated as a ‘ritual’ that somehow gets in the way of a normal meeting – I found it incredibly offensive,” Correll noted.
Similarly, a Maryland county has stopped reciting the Lord’s Prayer at the beginning of its meetings following criticism from atheists. The Wicomico County Council is now seeking to avoid legal risks, explaining that the issue began after a member read the Bible out loud during a September meeting.
