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Two public officials from Hamtramck, Michigan, were discharged from their positions for violating a city ordinance passed by an all-Muslim city council that banned the display of LGBTQ pride flags on public property.
Russ Gordon and Cathy Stackpoole, members of the Hamtramck Human Relations Commission, were removed from their posts after the council determined that they were responsible for displaying Pride flags in violation of the ordinance.
“This Council believes in fairness, neutrality towards our residents, and the rule of law, amongst other things for this community. We passed a resolution recently to do just that, and two of our sworn commissioners outright defied it, and did what they wanted,” Council member Khalil Refai said in a statement to Fox News.
“We were elected by the people of the community to make these decisions, and they not only violated the resolution but the trust of the whole community by doing this. For this reason, Council felt the appropriate response was to remove them from their public positions of trust,” Refai continued.
Prior to this event, the Council had voted to revoke the commission’s authority to hoist flags on city property on June 13. The prohibition extended to Pride flags, along with others, reflecting the sentiment of religious groups opposing the ideology encapsulated by these symbols.
“The City of Hamtramck does not allow any religious, ethnic, racial, political, or sexual orientation group flags to be flown on the City’s public properties, and that only, the American flag, the flag of the State of Michigan, the Hamtramck Flag, the Prisoner of War flag on City property,” the resolution said.
It’s noteworthy that the Hamtramck City Council comprises exclusively of Muslim members, with close to 40% of Hamtramck residents born outside of the United States. The resolution, it appears, speaks to the increasing hegemony of the Mohammedan faith in this idyllic Midwestern town.
In a bizarre twist, a woman wearing a clown nose approached the podium during the June meeting to satirize the debate about the Pride flag.
“Sure, many Hamtramck residents have fled countries where being gay is a death sentence, but nothing says we have to make it ‘comforting’ and ‘welcoming’ here,” the woman said.
However, it should be stressed that the Council’s prohibition on the Pride flag extends only to public property — private businesses or residences are not impacted. Nonetheless, the Muslim-dominated city government has seemingly outraged progressive members of the community with its purportedly neutral stance, which broadly prohibits identitarian symbols on government property.
