LGBTQ+ flags put up after another homophobic incident in Ramat Gan

A LGBTQ+ flag was torn down from a private residence in Ramat Gan on Saturday in the third LGBTQphobic incident reported in the city in the past month, according to Ynet.

A security camera caught the passerby stopping and trying for ten minutes to rip down the rainbow flag from the fence of the home before taking out a knife and cutting it down.

 

"I noticed on Sunday that the flag had disappeared, so I looked at the camera and saw everything," said Ravit Barnes, the resident of the home, to ynet.

Barnes lives in the home with her husband and four children and put up the flag to teach her kids. "This cannot be done. No one will interfere in what I want to do and challenge my right to raise the children in my belief that every person is accepted as a person, without any label," said Barnes.

The mother of four explained that she had received only positive responses when she first put up the flag, but "now the feeling is very uncomfortable. People have no boundaries if the person dedicated a quarter of an hour because of a flag to hurt other people."

In response to the incident, Ramat Gan Mayor Carmel Shama HaCohen had the municipality place LGBTQ+ flags on streets throughout the neighborhood.

 

"I decided to respond again with more light against this darkness and to place many LGBTQ+ flags around the entire neighborhood for a month," said the mayor. "Even for one who blindly believes in the righteousness of the prohibition of male intercourse in the Torah, he must remember that God did not appoint him to judge the other person in His place."

The incident on Saturday comes after a couple in the city received a note from a neighbor telling them to remove an LGBTQ+ flag from their balcony last month and after an LGBTQ+ "Pride Tag" decal on a store window in Ramat Gan was vandalized with a swastika last week.