Watch: Michigan City Bans LGBTQ Pride Flag, Other Political Flags from City Property

City of Hamtramck / YouTube
Katherine Hamilton

The all-Muslim city council of Hamtramck, Michigan, voted unanimously on Tuesday to approve a resolution that would ban the LGBTQ+ Pride flag from being flown on the city’s public property.

The resolution, proposed by Mayor Pro-Tem Muhammad Hassan, also bars any religious, ethnic, racial, political, or sexual orientation group flags from being flown on city property and only allows the American flag to be flown, along with state and city flags, other national flags, and the Prisoner of War flag, according to Click on Detroit. 

The resolution passed “after three hours of public comments and months of intense debate,” the Detroit Free Press reported.

“Hassan and other members of the council said the LGBTQ+ community and others are welcome in Hamtramck but that they need to respect religious freedom,” according to the report. “Some proponents of the resolution said the Pride flag clashes with their faith. Several speakers from Dearborn who were leaders in protests last year against LGBTQ books spoke at the Hamtramck meeting, saying American soldiers sacrificed for the U.S. flag, not the Pride flag.”

City Councilman Nayeem Choudhury said LGBTQ+ people will not be discriminated against in the city but should also respect the religious liberty of the city’s Muslim community. 

“We want to respect the religious rights of our citizens,” Choudhury said. “You guys are welcome. … (but) why do you have to have the flag shown on government property to be represented? You’re already represented. We already know who you are. … By making this (about) bigotry … it’s making it like you want to hate us.”

City council members also commented that the code was not about targeting a specific group, stating: “If you let one flag in, you’ll have to let all of the flags in.”

An immigrant from Yemen spoke in favor of the resolution, stating that while the city “respect[s] all nations, cultures, and their flags…we only salute the American flag.”

The man spoke of coming to the United States from Yemen as a child and believing until he was older that America was an evil, racist country because that is what he was taught in schools. It was not until he went back to Yemen as an adult and saw what he described as “poverty and chaos…at another level” that he realized how thankful he was to live in America, where he can “worship [his] creator in peace and tranquility.”

“Unfortunately, many people in our country don’t seem to understand this. They don’t know, or they don’t want to know, what it is like to live in extreme poverty, what it is like to live under severe repression, where there’s no freedom of speech, no freedom of religion,” the man said.

“I owe my success and my livelihood first and foremost to the Creator Himself, Almighty God, then to this great country. Our soldiers fought, bled, and died in the jungles of Iwo Jima and the beaches of Omaha so that you and I can live with peace, prosperity, and freedom,” he said. “Those soldiers fought under the American flag and no other.”

“It’s shameful and embarrassing to have any other flag on public buildings. You have the freedom to display whatever you wish in your home or your private businesses. We respect all nations, cultures, and their flags, but we only salute the American flag,” he concluded, telling the city council members, “Do not waver and do not flinch, you are doing the right thing. God bless you, and God Bless the United States of America.”

Activists and supporters of the LGBTQ+ agenda spoke against the resolution, “saying it would push them out of Hamtramck and reduce investment in the Detroit enclave known for its immigrant and artistic communities,” according to the report. 

At one point during the public comment portion of the city council session, a woman wearing a clown nose sarcastically stated that the city should change its slogan to say it “welcomes you if you’re straight” before kissing the woman next to her.

The Detroit Free Press noted that Hamtramck has the highest percentage of immigrants among the cities in Michigan and is the only city in the United States with all all-Muslim city council and mayor. The report states that the Tuesday vote was part of an ongoing debate in the city over the LGBTQ+ agenda.

“In 2008, conservative Christians launched an effort to defeat a ballot proposal in Hamtramck that would have protected gay rights, reaching out to the city’s growing Muslim community to hold rallies and defeat the proposal backed by LGBTQ advocates,” according to the report. “In 2021, then-Mayor Karen Majewski flew the Pride flag outside City Hall, drawing criticism and prompting challenger Amer Ghalib to make it a campaign issue. Ghalib defeated her and on Tuesday spoke out in favor of Hassan’s resolution.”

The approval of the resolution is another example of the growing coalition of Muslims nationwide standing with social conservatives to push back against far-left ideology.

“They are not big on ‘woke’ stuff and are not susceptible to being bullied,” Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform told Semafor this week. “They are woke-resistant.”

Last year in Dearborn, Michigan, Muslim parents demanded that “filth” and “pornography” be taken out of public schools, according to the report.

In late March, Muslim families in the Montgomery County School District in Maryland started showing up to school board meetings “in the hundreds,” along with Moms for Liberty, to organize against a rule that students could not opt out of reading books with LGBTQ themes, the report states.

In early June, a Montgomery County legislator accused those Muslim parents of being “on the same side of an issue as White supremacists and outright bigots,” Breitbart News reported.

“That is equity,” the legislator said. “That’s not an infringement on, you know, particular religious freedoms, just as we cannot allow folks to opt out of teachings about evolution.”

The Michigan state GOP’s outreach director and first-ever Muslim official, Rola Makki, told Semafor that she wants to convince Muslims that Democrats have left them behind to pursue an extreme agenda.

“A lot of people from the Middle East were persecuted for their beliefs and wanted to come here for religious freedom,” Makki said. “How did we go from love, tolerance, and acceptance to forcing beliefs on people?”

In March, Makki notably tweeted: “When someone asks me why as a Muslim I’ve aligned with the GOP, I just go to the Libs of TikTok page and show them the insanity from the progressive left.”

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