I don't think stories like this have much of a chance on the front page regardless. There's more than one force pushing them down: they're political, which attracts flags, they're not technical, which (usually unreasonably) attracts flags, and they're volatile, which sets off the flame-war detector. The big thing though is you can't stage a debate about flags on the thread itself; whatever you think of those flags, debating them publicly works against your goal.