WOKE? IT LITERALLY HAS A SECTARIAN IMAGE AT ITS CENTER:

"I was hoping this would be a thing that brings people together," said Gov. Spencer Cox, who signed the March flag bill. "I should have known better."

The path to a new Utah state flag involved years of effort in the legislature, including sorting through thousands of ideas. Many agreed it was important the design continue to feature a beehive, honoring the pioneers who arrived in the Salt Lake Valley on July 24, 1847, a date that is celebrated more than statehood.

"I did lay down the law on the beehive," the governor said. He threatened to veto any design that didn't have one.

The new flag's beehive sits inside a hexagon and has five stylized peaks above it, symbolizing Utah's mountain ranges, plus a swath of red below, a nod to Utah's red-rock canyons to the south. Designers made an amalgam of submissions from 72 people, each of whom was awarded a $100 gift certificate as a winner.

The governor said he recognized the need for a new flag when he attended the National Finals Rodeo, an event at which flags from many states were paraded. He looked for Utah's but found that it blended in with roughly two dozen others that also featured a state seal.

"We jokingly call those SOB flags--that's a seal on a bedsheet," said Ted Kaye, a vexillologist--flag scholar--and the compiler of a design booklet called "Good Flag, Bad Flag."

The old Utah flag--which was tweaked 12 years ago to fix a mistake that left the year 1847 in the wrong spot--wasn't simple or distinctive and it and didn't look good from a distance, said Mr. Kaye. He worked with state officials on the new one.

Critics unfurled a slew of complaints. Some accused the governor and state legislators of trying to cancel history.

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