'A sense of betrayal': liberal dismay as Muslim-led US city bans Pride flags

[Eugene]

Earlier DU threads:
• Metro Detroit cities rally behind LGBTQ+ residents after Hamtramck's Pride flag ban
• Hamtramck City Council {enclave within Detroit} bans Pride flag from city property

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Source: The Guardian

‘A sense of betrayal’: liberal dismay as Muslim-led US city bans Pride flags

Many liberals celebrated when Hamtramck, Michigan, elected a Muslim-majority council in 2015 but a vote to exclude LGBTQ+ flags from city property has soured relations

Tom Perkins in Hamtramck, Michigan
Sat 17 Jun 2023 11.00 BST
Last modified on Sat 17 Jun 2023 11.34 BST

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.

-snip-

Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/17/hamtramck-michigan-muslim-council-lgbtq-pride-flags-banned

No-registration link: https://archive.is/vwKC9

[Effete Snob]

1. I'm old enough to remember when...

….right wingers were freaking out about “Sharia Law”.

[JohnSJ]

2. Why should anyone be surprised by this

[delisen]

3. A downside of immigration. nt

[tanyev]

5. A downside of people not respecting the separation of church and state.

[MichMan]

4. Gov Whitmer needs to order them to display it.

[Hugh_Lebowski]

7. Under what legal authority? (nt)

[MichMan]

8. Make any state aid to cities contingent on the flag being displayed on government buildings

[Hugh_Lebowski]

9. By Executive Order?

I don't know the details in Michigan for certain, but seems to me purse-string issues are decided by the Legislature

[Hugh_Lebowski]

6. Obviously I think this is a shitty, hurtful, homophobic decision, but ...

We're supposed to 'respect' and give (undue, IMHO) imprimatur to people's imaginary sky daddies and 'scriptures' written by Bronze Age nomads who understood jack shit about jack shit at the time they were written, so ... here we are.

Fact is Pride flags are optional for cities, they have no official status like US and State flags do.

And it's not a ban on private person's displaying the flags, only the city doing so on it's property, decided on by the people's elected representatives.

To reiterate, I think they all suck for doing this, but it's in keeping with how this country operates generally/legally.

[icymist]

10. Great! Just Great! They traded one fundamental religion for another fundamental religion!

[LostOne4Ever]

11. The problem here (as always) are conservatives

Liberal Muslims and the LGBTQ community almost certainly wouldn’t be having This problem.

Don’t support conservatives over liberals no matter the religion.