Within the upscale homosexual resort city of Fireplace Island Pines, colourful flags honor LGBTQ+ historical past makers like actress Wanda Sykes and drag queen RuPaul in a small park close to the harbor. For a number of hours this month, one flag additionally honored Rep. Ritchie Torres, the primary brazenly homosexual Afro Latino member of Congress.
However Torres can be an outspoken supporter of Israel, and never lengthy after his flag went up, it was torn down by the homosexual activist group ACT-UP, which was additionally honored on the park, and changed with two flags, certainly one of which honored queer Palestinians.
Inside hours, the flag for queer Palestinians was additionally torn down by Michael Lucas, a pornographic performer and filmmaker with a historical past of anti-Muslim statements.
The dispute on Fireplace Island, simply off Lengthy Island, was only one expression of the tensions over the warfare within the Gaza Strip which have wracked American public life. However inside New York’s LGBTQ+ neighborhood, whose members hail from each ethnic and social background and are typically extremely attuned to problems with social justice, the warfare has touched off some particularly uncooked conflicts.
These divisions have been on full show throughout Pleasure Month, a time sometimes targeted on celebration and solidarity.
The struggle over how the neighborhood ought to reply to the warfare in Gaza has performed out in fiery on-line feedback and false accusations of pro-Hamas exercise. On Fireplace Island, the flag battle has pitted Torres and native owners, together with Lucas, towards the very activists honored on the park. Elsewhere in New York, related, if lower-profile, disputes have shaken homosexual bars, LGBTQ+ fundraising dinners and Pleasure festivities.
“I feel queer individuals are totally on one aspect of the talk,” stated Afeef Nessouli, a journalist and activist who has been highlighting the tales of LGBTQ+ individuals in Gaza on his widespread social media channels for the reason that warfare started. “It appears like queer individuals are popping out for Palestine in a very giant means.”
Certainly, members of the LGBTQ+ neighborhood overwhelmingly self-identify as politically liberal or average, in line with polls. A majority of Democrats have disapproved of Israel’s actions since no less than final November, one month after the warfare started, in line with Gallup surveys.
The warfare in Gaza started Oct. 7 after a Hamas-led assault on Israel killed roughly 1,200 individuals and resulted in 250 extra taken to Gaza as hostages, in line with Israeli officers. Since then, greater than 36,000 individuals have been killed in Gaza, well being officers within the territory stated. Nearly 2 million individuals have been displaced from their properties in Gaza, and the area’s civilian infrastructure has been destroyed.
Final month, the highest prosecutor of the Worldwide Legal Court docket stated he was in search of arrest warrants for the leaders of each Israel and Hamas on prices of crimes towards humanity.
However supporters of Israel, together with some vocal LGBTQ+ individuals, usually argue that the neighborhood ought to help the nation as a result of, whereas it lags behind Western nations on some homosexual rights points, it’s extra tolerant than different locations within the Center East.
In Gaza, like in lots of locations within the Arab world, homosexuality stays taboo, and homosexual life occurs largely behind closed doorways. Authorities persecution is just not unusual, and in a single high-profile case, Hamas killed a distinguished commander after accusing him of embezzlement and homosexuality.
“Did it ever happen to them that Hamas is a barbaric oppressor of Queer Palestinians?” Torres, who represents the Bronx, stated in an announcement after the Fireplace Island controversy, in reference to the activists who eliminated his flag. “A Queer Palestinian is much freer and safer in Israel than in a Gaza Strip dominated by Hamas.”
Professional-Israel social media accounts, together with one run by the Israeli overseas ministry, have made related arguments. One put up that was shared by the Israeli authorities in November reveals a smiling Israeli soldier in Gaza holding a rainbow flag towards a backdrop of bombed-out buildings. An Israeli tank will be seen behind him.
“The primary ever satisfaction flag raised in Gaza,” the overseas ministry stated on the social platform X.
Critics of Israel describe these arguments as pink-washing, or using a rustic’s constructive method to LGBTQ+ points to distract from its poor human rights file in different areas.
“Simply because we will’t have a homosexual satisfaction parade in your city doesn’t imply you need to be starved or bombed,” stated Mordechai Levovitz, the founding father of Jewish Queer Youth, a corporation for Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox LGBTQ+ younger individuals in New York, and a critic of Israel’s conduct within the warfare.
“A lot of my household nonetheless very a lot rejects queer individuals, however I’d by no means need them to be damage or starved or oppressed simply because they don’t settle for me,” stated Levovitz, who grew up in an Orthodox residence. “Rejecting that sort of binary” is a crucial a part of being a member of the LGBTQ+ neighborhood, even whether it is sophisticated, he stated.
Disputes over the warfare have erupted elsewhere since Oct. 7.
Massive crowds protested a Human Rights Marketing campaign gala in New York in February and the GLAAD Media Awards in Los Angeles in Could. They denounced the ties of each teams to pro-Israel organizations or to protection contractors that make weapons for the Israeli navy. Considered one of HRC’s donors is Northrop Grumman, a protection firm; GLAAD companions with the Anti-Defamation League, a bunch that combats antisemitism and different bigotry and helps Israel.
In Brooklyn, the nightclub Three Greenback Invoice has spent months grappling with the fallout of its determination to host, then cancel, then uncancel a celebration for Eurovision, the worldwide music contest that confronted criticism this 12 months for letting Israel take part. Activists on each side decried every transfer the membership made, and in current weeks, it has been hit with a wave of what its homeowners consider are politically motivated Pleasure month cancellations.
The divisions have additionally ensnared The Heart, the distinguished LGBTQ+ neighborhood hub in Greenwich Village, a neighborhood that has performed a central function in homosexual historical past.
In March, The Heart hosted an iftar occasion for Ramadan, the place homosexual and transgender Muslims, their associates and neighborhood leaders gathered to have fun the day by day breaking of the quick.
However The Heart’s personal fraught historical past with queer Center Easterners and Muslims loomed giant. It was in the course of battle in 2011 after Lucas, the Fireplace Island filmmaker, efficiently pressured it to cancel a pro-Palestinian occasion.
Throughout remarks on the Ramadan occasion, Bashar Makhay, a co-organizer of Tarab NYC, an LGBTQ+ Center Jap group, famous that The Heart had apologized for the previous.
However he additionally urged it to go additional and announce help for Palestinians, “denounce pink-washing, demand a cease-fire and condemn the continued genocide.”
The viewers cheered. When the applause died down, Makhay continued. “Liberation — together with queer and trans liberation,” he stated, “is just not achieved via silos or silence.”
Fireplace Island has been a slow-moving summertime refuge for LGBTQ+ individuals for the reason that Fifties and has welcomed distinguished vacationers like Calvin Klein, David Geffen, Jonathan Van Ness and Bowen Yang.
The battle there arose this month after a ceremony at Trailblazers Park, a tiny pavilion on the boardwalk the place flags fly honoring notable members of the LGBTQ+ neighborhood.
In the course of the ceremony, Iman Le Caire, an Egyptian transgender activist who helped to determine the park, referred to as for an finish to the warfare. She instructed the gang that when she stated, “Free Palestine,” she meant “free our queer and transgender individuals” in Gaza and the West Financial institution.
“We stand for them,” she stated. “Once we say, ‘Free Palestine,’ we aren’t saying, ‘Free Hamas.’”
Nonetheless, a house owner later accused Le Caire on Instagram of utilizing her speech to help Hamas and to have interaction in antisemitic hate speech, setting off days of acrimonious back-and-forth.
Tensions rose additional when members of ACT-UP, an activist group greatest recognized for elevating the alarm concerning the AIDS disaster within the Nineteen Eighties and Nineteen Nineties, tore down the flag honoring Torres. The group changed it with the flag honoring queer Palestinians and one other to honor Cecilia Gentili, a transgender chief who died in February.
Jason Rosenberg, a member of ACT-UP New York, stated group members deliberate their protest after they realized they’d be honored alongside Torres.
“We thought Ritchie was a poor option to be honored, particularly this 12 months, as a result of he has been supporting Israel’s insurance policies,” Rosenberg stated.
Lucas, who shortly tore down the pro-Palestinian flag, is well-known locally for his years as an opinion author on homosexual information websites. He has steadily criticized Islam and Muslims and as soon as expressed his help for burning the Quran, which he in comparison with Mein Kampf. He was broadly criticized final 12 months after he tweeted an image of an Israeli rocket with the phrases “From Michael Lucas, to Gaza” written on it.
Lucas posted a video on social media of himself carrying a stepladder to the park; tearing down the flag, which included ACT-UP’s conventional slogan, “Silence = Demise”; and throwing it within the trash.
“We don’t want Hamas propaganda dividing us,” he wrote within the put up with the video. “In any other case this ‘open and numerous’ neighborhood will likely be unwelcome to Jews.”
Torres echoed Lucas on June 2, writing on X that by supporting the Palestinians, members of ACT-UP “brazenly align themselves with Hamas.”
Lucas stated in an announcement Saturday that he tore down the flag as a result of he thought the activists have been motivated by “traditional, textbook antisemitism.”
He questioned why ACT-UP didn’t protest the therapy of homosexual individuals in Arab nations, “however they rant a couple of warfare began by Hamas they know nothing about. Just because it entails Jews.”
Finally, the Fireplace Island Pines Property Proprietor’s Affiliation, which acts as a form of de facto city authorities for the summer time colony, took down all three flags from Trailblazers Park and stated it will discover a new option to honor Torres.
Its president, Henry Robin, additionally wrote a letter to the neighborhood praising Le Caire, Torres and ACT-UP. He reminded everybody that, no matter their variations, they have been all a part of the identical neighborhood.
“It was not the primary time, and won’t be the final, that completely different segments of the LGBTQ+ neighborhood have been at odds with each other,” he wrote. “Advocacy, protest, and even battle are all a part of LGBTQ+ historical past, however even amid our disagreements we will proceed to construct a brighter future collectively.”