You missed the point. But I don’t want to hijack this thread any further by a discussion about this. Feel free to start a new thread if you really think such trigger warning are important in an interview with an author about what it was like growing up as a gay person.
Black socks with shorts!
OK, there is perhaps a sliver of a chance the parade organizers had a point. If you look at the actual flag in question (see the link in Riemann’s first post), this is not simply a rainbow flag with a Star of David on it. The SoD looks to be exactly the size and exactly in the same place it would be on the Israeli Flag. If that is the case, then I think one could argue that the folks were representing Israel and not “Jews”. Or, that someone who didn’t know them might think they were.
So, maybe (and I might be overly optimistic here), once the two sides can sit down and talk like level headed adults, they might see where this was simply a misunderstanding, and not something there should be a bone of contention over.
If this was, in fact, meant to be an anti-Zionist parade, then one might reasonably not want a “Zionist Flag” to be flown. Not because it made some people feel “unsafe”, but because it was antithetical to one of the main purposes of the parade.
N.b: I don’t know enough about this parade to know one way or another, but just from the pieces presented here, I wonder if there might be more to the story than the sensationalism presented.
The Star of David is in the center of the Israeli flag. Saying it’s in the same place because it’s in the center is a little specious.
This whole thread makes me sad.
The organizers of the march say the three people they kicked out "after they repeatedly expressed support for Zionism during conversations with Chicago Dyke March Collective members. According to one of the women asked to leave, however, she only expressed support for the state of Israel after being repeatedly asked if she was a Zionist, because of the flag she was carrying. There’s also this:
The march organizers insist they’re anti-Zionist, not anti-Semitic. This article, from a site I’ve never heard of and cannot vouch for, has what appears to be the full text of the march organizer’s explanation (parts of which are quoted in the Haaretz article, so I think it’s genuine.) It also features quotes from several supporters of the march’s actions who are themselves Jewish.
From what I’m reading, I’m leaning towards the march organizers being assholes, but not necessarily racist assholes. But I’m not shutting the door on them being both just yet.
Huh, wha? 
It’s a typical Star of David, rendered in its most typical configuration, and the center of the flag is the most obvious place to put it.
Besides, the two stripes are an indispensible part of the flag of Israel. If the group wanted to combine the rainbow and Israeli flags, they’d have included 2 stripes that match the star, and probably would have rendered the star and stripes in light blue as well.
I used to organize the interpreters for one of the national women’s music festivals. I won’t say which one. I will say that I am intimately familiar with lesbian politics. They can be real assholes. Not because I’m Jewish, but because of what I know about lesbians being in charge of things, I was already leaning toward the organizers being assholes. But not anti-Semitic. Just tunnel-visioned and monolithic. They (and not every lesbian I’ve ever met, but the ones who gravitate to being ad-hoc committee heads and such) don’t get that you can disagree with me about something and not be against me. They literally believe that everyone who doesn’t have exactly the same beliefs about them regarding everything is somehow out to get them.
I used to chalk this up to older women being a little paranoid because of their life experiences-- if you’d been gay before the 1980s, and especially before about 1968, you had reason to be paranoid. But I’m now seeing this happen in women younger than me. Maybe it’s learned behavior handed down from earlier generations, or maybe it’s something else. When I was in the Army, it was obvious to me that straight women had more difficulty getting a task done if they weren’t “besties” with the other women, while men could just buckle down and get something over and done with, no matter how they felt about the other men. So some of this is probably coming into play as well.
I hate to generalize, but I put up with a huge amount of crap, before I said “I don’t have to do this anymore,” and I know I didn’t imagine it.
Gay Jews everywhere should organise their Rebbes to make a collective protest stating how much they value gayness.
FWIW, Amazon has a flag just like the one under discussion for sale, as “Large Flag Gay Pride flag of Israel Flag Gay pride flag variant used in Israel Flag outdoor Flag Flying flag.”
(Really good job making sure they included all the necessary "L"s in that product description, btw.)
A little Googling around shows a lot of flags like that being described as “Israeli pride flags,” such as this Wikimedia Commons page. So, the idea that sticking a Star of David on a rainbow background and calling that a combination of the pride flag and the flag of Israel isn’t something that was invented just now by these march organizers so they could kick out a couple of Jews.
If you feel like checking out their Facebook page you can see they are basically doubling down on this by soliciting statements of support from other hyper-radical left groups. They also have people working frantically to delete any and all posts that don’t agree with their position that ALL Jews are Zionists simply by being proud of their Jewish heritage. I would gladly show you examples of people being zapped off their page for just that reason but…well…their comments got zapped. These people won’t apologize for jack because they don’t believe they can be wrong. If you depart from the orthodox view you become the same as the oppressor. Pretty much Spartacist League/Trotskyist type thinking.
QFT
Sorry for snipping your post but the part I quoted is the part I think needs to be emphasized, particularly the section I bolded. Like I said before, leftist thought police are just as bad as rightist thought police.
Ain’t no difference.
I should get you in a room with my ex-boyfriend, who used to do a lot of organizing for trans-rights organizations. You could compare scars, like that scene from Jaws. He was on the naming commission for the South-West Asian North African Bay Area Queer association. (SWANABAQ, for short.) If you can imagine how long that committee took to settle on that name, you can probably also imagine how well they received his, “Let’s just call ourselves ‘The California Gayrabs,’” suggestion.
All that shows it that the flag may have its origins with gay rights groups in Israel. That no more makes it a flag endorsing actions of the government of Israel than gay pride flags with other symbols added to them.
Does every rainbow flag with a cross or ichthys added mean the person displaying it supports the actions of all Christians?
I feel like I’m just about in the same place. It seems nonsensical to kick those guys out of he parade, but I’m not 100% sure they were kicked out for being Jewish. And, frankly, it’s hard for me to understand a Gay Pride parade that is also pro-Palestinian, but hey, if it’s your parade, you get to set the rules.
And I’m happy to be corrected if I’m wrong about trying to keep at least a modicum of an open mind here. But I just find it useful to question pretty much everything one reads on the internet.
The left is becoming monolithic. Now you’re expected to have whatever views the team says you’re supposed to have, even if those views aren’t necessarily best for your particular group. Israel’s “supposed tolerance”?! I guess gays are expected to sell out Arab gays because the Palestine issue overall has been judged more important by the more powerful elements of the left.
I mean, being team players can be a good thing, but individuality is important too.
I spent about 5 minutes scanning their Facebook page and I’m massively confused as to what the overall point of their organization and their parade is.
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Extrapolating from these shitbags to “the left” is specious at best.
The Right, The Left, whatever pole in however many dimensions you want to go, all have individuals who insist on purity of thought according to what they happen to believe the statements of faith should be, always have. These happen to be Leftist Dyke shitbags but they do not represent the Left, they represent only themselves.
Are there others like them on the Far Left? Of course. But there are just as many like them on the other far poles.
IF the organizers came out with a statement that stated that they had ignorantly mistaken the Star of David as the Flag of Israel, rather than being the widely accepted symbol representing a complete religion/diverse ethnic group across the world, then they could come out of this looking only as very very stupid intolerant assholes.
Then give a warning. Otherwise you are just encouraging this. It is not fair for him to be able to harass me without punishment, but I can’t do it back.
RINOs? Tax pledges? NRA grades? Any of this ringing any bells?
Both sides have their litmus tests.
I am fully willing to consider the idea that I am wrong. But attacking me (outside the Pit no less) or just saying “you’re wrong” is not the way to get anyone to do that.
It not being the main parade only strengthens my point. That gives them even more leeway to have their own rules. If it were the entire LGBT community, then I could argue that they should be listening to everyone about what the rules should be.
But the argument isn’t that. It’s not “these rules were not agreed upon.” This is one group asserting antisemitism. There is no such thing as “veering towards antisemitism”–it either is or it isn’t. And if you want to argue that, then do so. Show me that other similar flags are allowed in this particular parade, but just not this one.
The group gave their reasons for not supporting this group, and they weren’t antisemitic. And, as a liberal, I have to listen to what both sides are saying, and not just assume the one doing something that initially seems bad is wrong. That’s the tactic used to attack liberal causes. (which is 100% the intention of the OP.)
Could they be lying? Sure. It could just be a rationalization for antisemitism. That’s why seeing if there are other such flags allowed is so important. But my default assumption will not be that the parade people are horrible people.
And people need to understand this basic concept. Morality does not in any way depend on experience. I can say something is wrong without ever having participated in it, and I can say it is not wrong without participating in it. That entire line of reasoning is just an emotional argument.
And I love how people who read more into the situation are moderating their stances closer to mine. Just because I decided to actually listen to the “bad guys” and what they claimed, instead of assuming they were racist sacks of shit.