The Grand Ole Opry has been embroiled in a controversy over the Confederate flag—but it's not the Tennessee venue, and the controversy appears to be over, at least for now. The BBC reports that members of Scotland's most famous country music club, of the same name as its Nashville counterpart, have voted by secret ballot, and by a super-slim margin, to uphold a ban last month on using the Civil War-era flag from across the pond. The flag had been incorporated into the Glasgow club's nightly routine, which involves a flag-folding ceremony.
After the club voted on Oct. 9 to nix the flag once waved by Confederate states, the Grand Ole Opry's president resigned, while other members called for a vote to reinstate it. The most recent vote, held during an emergency meeting on Monday, was 50 to 48 in favor of removing it. The "American Trilogy" flag-folding ceremony that some members defended was ostensibly to honor those who'd died in the Civil War. "As the Southern states lost the war, and due to the fact that this part of America supplied us then, as now, with most of the trends that influence our music, dress, and dance, it is the Southern flag (often called the Confederate Battle flag) which is folded," the venue's website explains.
"We dedicate the American Trilogy as a salute in memory of all those men and women lost from both sides," the site adds. However, a club official tells Glasgow Live that the flag had been "causing offense to visitors and a lot of members" and was "also the cause of a few disturbances" that was "affecting the safety of the committee, members, and visitors." The venue notes that various events had also been canceled at the venue over the flag, which is claimed by some as a symbol of Southern heritage, but by others as a racist symbol. "It is a disgrace in this day and age that there are still members who wish to use the Confederate flag for their ceremony," one club member told the BBC before the vote. (More Confederate flag stories.)
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