Category: gay rights

Newly elected majority-Muslim city council in Michigan bans Pride flags

June 19, 2023 • 9:30 am

I’d normally call this “you get what you vote for,” but not all Muslims are as authoritarian and Puritanical as those on the city council of Hamtramck, Michigan. Actually, the Guardian story, while displaying the homophobia of a group of Muslim-Americans, also has me a bit conflicted, for the law they passed does impose a general ideological neutrality on the city, and I can’t say I disagree with that. Click to read:

Here are the facts:

In 2015, many liberal residents in Hamtramck, Michigan, celebrated as their city attracted international attention for becoming the first in the United States to elect a Muslim-majority city council.

They viewed the power shift and diversity as a symbolic but meaningful rebuke of the Islamophobic rhetoric that was a central theme of then Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s campaign.

This week many of those same residents watched in dismay as a now fully Muslim and socially conservative city council passed legislation banning Pride flags from being flown on city property that had – like many others being flown around the country – been intended to celebrate the LGBTQ+ community.

Muslim residents packing city hall erupted in cheers after the council’s unanimous vote, and on Hamtramck’s social media pages, the taunting has been relentless: “Fagless City”, read one post, emphasized with emojis of a bicep flexing.

In a tense monologue before the vote, Councilmember Mohammed Hassan shouted his justification at LGBTQ+ supporters: “I’m working for the people, what the majority of the people like.”

Oy.

CNN says this about the resolution:

Hamtramck’s city council members voted unanimously Tuesday to approve the controversial resolution, which restricts the city from flying any “religious, ethnic, racial, political, or sexual orientation group flags” on public grounds, according to meeting minutes.

The resolution stipulates that along with the American flag, the city also flies flags “that represent the international character” of the area. It says that “each religious, ethnic, racial, political, or sexually oriented group is already represented by the country it belongs to.”

Thus national flags are permitted to be flown, along with the city flag (if there is one).

Now shouting “Fagless City” is clearly homophobia, and is reprehensible. And its source is clearly religion: the council appears to consist entirely of Muslim males, and the vote was unanimous.  Liberals felt betrayed, as they were proud of having elected a city council made up of people of color, who then turned on them and dumped on gay people.

Back to the Guardian:

“There’s a sense of betrayal,” said the former Hamtramck mayor Karen Majewski, who is Polish American. “We supported you when you were threatened, and now our rights are threatened, and you’re the one doing the threatening.”

She’s referring to this:

But Majewski said the majority is now disrespecting the minority. She noted that a white, Christian-majority city council in 2005 created an ordinance to allow the Muslim call to prayer to be broadcast from the city’s mosques five times daily. It did so over objections of white city residents, and Majewski said she didn’t see the same reciprocity with roles reversed.

Well, the council hasn’t done anything to threaten gay rights yet (the absence of a flag is not a threat), but the Council blamed gays for this law!

Their talking points mirror those made elsewhere: some Hamtramck Muslims say they simply want to protect children, and gay people should “keep it in their home”.

But that sentiment is “an erasure of the queer community and an attempt to shove queer people back in the closet”, said Gracie Cadieux, a queer Hamtramck resident who is part of the Anti-Transphobic Action group.

Mayor Amer Ghalib, 43, who was elected in 2021 with 67% of the vote to become the nation’s first Yemeni American mayor, told the Guardian on Thursday he tries to govern fairly for everyone, but said LGBTQ+ supporters had stoked tension by “forcing their agendas on others”.

“There is an overreaction to the situation, and some people are not willing to accept the fact that they lost,” he said, referring to Majewski and recent elections that resulted in full control of the council by Muslim politicians.

I’m not sure what “agenda” was being forced on the council save civil rights that gays already enjoy. No other “agenda” is mentioned.   But there’s is a backstory of divisiveness here.

On one level, the discord that has flared between Muslim and non-Muslim populations in recent years has its root in a culture clash that is unique to a partly liberal small US city now under conservative Muslim leadership, residents say. Last year, the council approved an ordinance allowing backyard animal sacrifices, shocking some non-Muslim residents even though animal sacrifice is protected under the first amendment in the US as a form of religious expression.

I’m a hard-line First Amendment person, but I don’t think that killing sentient mammals to propitiate one’s god is a valid form of religious expression.  Do the goats get a choice? It’s okay, I think, to take peyote if that’s part of your religion, and has been for a while; and that’s what the courts have ruled. But my approbation stops at killing animals who don’t have a say in the process, and I don’t care if animal sacrifice is part of religious rites in some Muslim cultures.

Speaking of legalized substances, Hamtramck tried to ban marijuana use, too, but legalized weed had already passed as a state law, and so Hamtramck was too late:

When Michigan legalized marijuana, it gave municipalities a late 2020 deadline to enact a prohibition of dispensaries. Hamtramck council missed the deadline and a dispensary opened, drawing outrage from conservative Muslims who demanded city leadership shut it down. That ignited counterprotests from many liberal residents, and the council only relented when it became clear it had no legal recourse.

But here’s where my opinion about the homophobia evinced by the Muslim council gets a bit confused (my bolding):

The resolution, which also prohibits the display of flags with ethnic, racist and political views, comes at a time when LGBTQ+ rights are under assault worldwide. . . .

First, the ban is only for flags on city property, which constitute an official government statement.  I am of course for total gay rights identical to normal civil rights,  but putting pro-gay flags on city property is a political statement, much as you may disagree. If you allow that, then you allow all kinds of displays on city property that people might disagree with. What about putting up flags of Christian organizations, or the Confederate flag, or a display of the Ten Commandments? Surely you’d object to those, but free speech demands that if you allow one expression of political sentiments on city property, you must allow them all. (Yes, I know that some U.S. courts have allowed privately-funded displays of Ten Commandments on public property, often on grounds that it’s a “historical and not a religious” statement, but I think they’re dead wrong. Just read the Bible!)

And in fact the resolution could be interpreted, whatever its motivations, as mandating viewpoint neutrality. Again:

The resolution, which also prohibits the display of flags with ethnic, racist and political views, comes at a time when LGBTQ+ rights are under assault worldwide,

So, much as we may deplore the homophobia instantiated by this vote, the ban was extended to all flags expressing political and ideological views. It’s really no different from the institutional neutrality of the University of Chicago. It’s one thing to have a statement in the law or in University rules saying the organization doesn’t discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, which is a good thing to declare, but another thing entirely to publicly celebrate gay rights with flags.

If you allow such celebrations, that you must allow celebrations of all sentiments, and, depending who’s in charge of flags, you might not like some of the stuff being celebrated.  Remember that the Confederate flag used to fly over the dome of the Capitol Building of South Carolina, until governor Nikki Haley declared in 2015 that it should be removed, and signed a bill to that effect. It was, of course, celebrating segregation. There are still bad feelings about the flag’s removal, of course.

A Hamtramck councilman expressed this sentiment, though he may well be dissimulating:

The resolution, brought by city council member Mohammed Hassan, says that the city will not provide special treatment to any group of people. City council members shared that flying a Pride flag could potentially lead to other “radical or racist groups” asking for their flags to be flown.

So while I do approve of a resolution that limits flags conveying political or ideological sentiments, I also disapprove of the timing of this resolution, which was clearly meant to convey a homophobic message during Pride Month.  And it’s clear that this resolution was at bottom motivated by religious beliefs. But in the end, state governments, like universities, should show political, ideological, and moral neutrality in their public displays. An American and a state or city flag is sufficient.

However, a resolution that demonizes gays, damns Gay Pride Month, or tries to curb LGBTQ+ rights, well, that’s another thing, for that is discrimination.

Feel free to agree or disagree below.

 

h/t:Peter

Andrew Sullivan on the Netflix walkout and the anti-gay movement

October 25, 2021 • 9:30 am

Update: Over at his website (this portions can be read for free), Matt Taibbi goes hard after the MSM’s distorted reading of both Chapelle’s bit and its own faulty reporting. Read Taibbi’s “Cancel culture takes a big ‘L‘”.

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After Netflix broadcast Dave Chappelle’s latest comedy show, “The Closer,” he was accused not just of transphobia, but homophobia, and by gay-plus organizations like GLAAD (see here and here, for instance). Netflix employees walked out in a protest, and had a scuffle with Chapelle fans who also showed up. Here’s an example of the rancor (this video is hard to find; I think the Netflix protestors are embarrassed, as they shoul be):

Here’s Andrew Sullivan’s take on the incident from his latest column on Substack (I believe a read is free, but do subscribe):

It was, as it turned out, a bit of a non-event. The walkout by transgender Netflix employees and their supporters to demand that the company take down and apologize for the latest Chappelle special attracted “dozens,” despite media hype.

But the scenes were nonetheless revealing. A self-promoting jokester showed up with a placard with the words “We Like Jokes” and “We Like Dave” to represent an opposing view. He was swiftly accosted by a man who ripped the poster apart, leaving the dude with just a stick, prompting the assailant to shout “He’s got a weapon!” Pushed back by other protestors, he was then confronted by a woman right in front of him — shaking a tambourine — and yelling repeatedly into his face: “Repent, motherfucker! Repent! Repent!”

This is the state of what’s left of the gay rights movement in America. Judgmental, absolutist, intolerant, and hysterical, it looks to shut down speech it dislikes, drive its foes out of the public square, compile enemies’ lists of dangerous writers, artists, and politicians, and cancel and protest anything that does not comport with every tiny aspect of their increasingly deranged ideology.

Now gay activists don’t behave like this, at least now; it’s largely the trans activists who do, and Sullivan compares them to the opponents of gay rights in the past:

Anti-gay forces, hegemonic for centuries, were just like these trans activists. They were just as intent on suppressing and stigmatizing magazines, shows, and movies they believed were harmful. They too targeted individual artists and writers for personal destruction. They too believed that movies and comedy needed to be reined in order to prevent social harm. They protested in front of movie theaters. They tried to get shows canceled. And if you’d marched in any gay demo or Pride in the 1990s, you’d always be prepared to confront a grimacing Christianist yelling “Repent! Repent!” in your face.

In fact, it’s hard not to see the trans far left as a farcical replay of the Religious Right of the past. They are the Dana Carvey church ladies of our time, except instead of saying “Could it be Satan?!” when confronting some cultural or moral transgression, they turn to the camera, clutch their pearls, and say “Could it be whiteness?!”

This was never, ever the spirit of the gay rights movement in the past. In fact, it was America’s guarantee of free expression and free association that made the gay rights movement possible. It was the First Amendment, and the spirit of the First Amendment, that was easily the most important right for gays for decades. From the fledgling Society for Human Rights, formed in Chicago in 1924, and its pioneering magazine, Friendship and Freedom, to the struggles against censorship in the 1950s, with One Magazine, and erotic Physique pamphlets under siege, it was the First Amendment that, especially under Oliver Wendell Holmes, allowed gay people to find each other, to develop arguments for their own dignity and self-worth, and to sustain free associations when the entire society viewed them as perverts and undesirables and child molesters.

What Sullivan says about the First Amendment and gay rights is, so far as I know, true. Thus the irony in that those backing trans rights often call for suppression of speech. A notable and especially ironic twist is that the ACLU itself, formerly a hard-nosed defender of the First Amendment, has as its chief attorney for trans right an explicit censor:

Seriously, I don’t know anybody who has “transphobia” in the sense that they want to suppress or deny the rights of transgender people. But within the issue there is room for debate about how cis-trans relations should work—cases involving prison enrollment, sports participation, and so on. But even to broach these topics is taboo, as J. K. Rowling and others have found who have questioned the exact equation of transwomen with natal (biological) women. The instant you mention such issues, you’re branded a transphobe and the mob descends. It’s easier to hurl epithets than cobble together a coherent defense.

I don’t remember such rancor with the gay rights movement, but of course that was a long time ago. There were of course dire things gay-rights advocates did, like “outing” closeted people, but it seems to me the movement advanced largely by reasoned argument—things like Andrew Sullivan’s cogent arguments for gay marriage. (Read, for example, his 1989 New Republic article, “Here comes the groom.”

At any rate, behavior like that depicted above, or the constant demonizing of people who are really in favor of trans rights as “transphobes” because they’re not 100% with the party line, will not only not help their cause, but plays right into the hands of Republicans eager to elect Trump in 2024. Sullivan goes on about the various ways that gay writers, poets, and playwrights used the First Amendment, but you can read that for yourself. He ends this way, chastising “the capture of the gay movement” by authoritarians who avoid reasoned argument. I’ve bolded one sentence because it’s so characteristic of this kind of authoritarianism:

The capture of the gay rights movement by humor-free, fragile products of the social justice industrial complex is not just terrible PR for all of us. It’s awful politics. They are not even trying to persuade, debate, or make reasoned arguments — as we did relentlessly in the marriage movement. They do not engage and invite critics, as we did. They try to destroy them. Instead of arguments, they tweet out slogans in all caps — TRANS WOMEN ARE WOMEN — as if they’re citing a Biblical text. And the act of persuasion, the key to any liberal democracy, is, for them, an unjust imposition of “emotional labor.” So much easier to coerce.

It also pains me to see the gay rights movement deploy what is in effect mob bullying as a tactic. That’s what these Twitter campaigns are all about. The way these fanatics have tried to turn one of the most successful and imaginative writers of our time, J.K. Rowling, into a hate object has been achieved by the foulest of language, elevated by the megaphone of social media. Yes: the very people most subject to bullying in childhood are now acting like bullies as adults. In the words of the great gay poet, W.H. Auden:

I and the public know

What all schoolchildren learn.

Those to whom evil is done

Do evil in return.

This is the temptation. We have to resist it. It is a betrayal of so many through history. And it could provoke a backlash that is as damaging as it is deserved.

Now of course not all trans advocates behave this way. But I’ve seen very few telling their compatriots that they’re going too far. Who in the movement has criticized the ACLU’s Chase Strangio for explicitly calling for censorship?