Women Got Kicked Out of the "Dyke March" for Carrying Jewish Pride Flags
Source – Three people carrying Jewish Pride flags were asked to leave the annual Chicago Dyke March on Saturday.
The Chicago-based LGBTQ newspaper Windy City Times quoted a Dyke March collective member as saying the rainbow flag with the Star of David in the middle “made people feel unsafe,” and that the march was “pro-Palestinian” and “anti-Zionist.”
The Chicago Dyke March is billed as an “anti-racist, anti-violent, volunteer-led, grassroots mobilization and celebration of dyke, queer, bisexual, and transgender resilience,” according to its Twitter account.
Laurel Grauer, a member of the Jewish LGBTQ organization A Wider Bridge, told the Windy City Times “it was a flag from my congregation which celebrates my queer, Jewish identity which I have done for over a decade marching in the Dyke March with the same flag.”
“They were telling me to leave because my flag was a trigger to people that they found offensive,” she added.
I’m neither queer, female, Jewish, a dyke, from Chicago, Palestinian or someone who’s been part of a march since 5th grade when Mrs. Gellar used that verb to tell me how to go to the principal’s office for mouthing off in class. So I admit that I’m pretty far removed on this one. Like a guy watching a tank full of fish fighting each other from my male, Christian, hetero American side of the glass. That said, color me confused on this one.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the Pride parade where a couple of gay guys weren’t allowed to march because they’re pro-Trump. I didn’t totally get that one either, since it seems to me the whole point of a Pride march is to promote acceptance and tolerance. Especially for LBGTQs, since they’ve been excluded from parades themselves. Not to mention, Trump has always supported same sex marriage. But at least on some level they can make a case that Trump has anti-gays in his cabinet or whatever. So fine.
This, on the other hand, just has me baffled. It’s a march for anti-racism and celebration of dyke resilience, hating on a resilient dyke for her race. Or her religion. The one with the congregation that accepts her. Or a country governed by people of her religion. The only country in that part of the world, by the way, where same sex marriage is legal. As in, it won’t get you arrested and maybe put to death like in all the others. Again, I plead ignorance. But it strikes me as a little odd that an LGBTQ march in Chicago would be pro-Palestine, given that an LGBTQ march in Gaza City wouldn’t make it past the first telephone pole before the ancient, stony instruments of pointy, gay-bashing intolerance would come raining down upon them.
So ultimately I guess I come down on the side of Laurel Grauer on this one. It’s kind of a Merchant of Venice thing with me. Hath not an LBGTQ Jew eyes? Hath not an LBGTQ Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as an anti-Zionist dykes? Especially since she marched for ten years with the same flag before? But I’d like the full time protesters to figure this stuff out before the next march because I can’t keep up anymore.