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01/02/05 by Jonathan J Joslin (B-F-P)

If Brent Borough Council informed the Alperton Hindu & Muslim community that they will have to remove all cultural and national symbols from outside their shops, restaurants and social centres, or face a daily fine until they were removed, there would be a national full blown riot against the state and government, and that is an understatement.

In 1972 a flag was created, a flag with six colours, this flag like any flag that is design, not just to represent a national standing as human beings, but as an international minority fighting for human and civil rights. This flag was called the freedom flag, and like any countries national flags, to Global cultural flags, are icons, made and flown to show pride & dignity as a minority of people, and a representation of who that minority is. A national culturally symbolised flag is not a comercial construct for representing or obtaining financial gain for a minority, and like all national flags, that are used commercially, like the American flag for example [know as the star spangled banner], is to commercialise pride and national standing as a people, to aspire you to stand up for what you believe you are as a minority. Any and every minority that has a national or internation flag that reprosents them, would never allow social prejudice to damage that minority standing, let alone allow any to eradicate it, or have the governing state charge you, to display such necassary cultural dignity. Well... until now...

In the new year 2005 , Westminster Council informed every LGBT business from club, bars, restaurants in central London to remove all freedom flags from the streets of central London Soho, with a treat of a daily fine if they did not comply. Westminster council directly accused Soho LGBT establishments that the freedom flag was an advertising statement to gain revenue, and instituted a legal fine of £25o a day if they were not removed, and then they had to pay to have them on their premises with planning permission only.

Gay.com reported: "According to press reports, the council also claimed that the flags were being used as advertising by some venues." Did the LGBT community riot? Did the LGBT businesses call in lobby groups to deal with the situation? Did they investigate to see if this was just LGBT businesses being targeted? Did they tell the Westminster council that the freedom flag was a international cultural flag that has as much right to be on walls of any LGBT establishment, without having to pay for it, like any other cultural minority that fly symbols to represent what they are? Did anyone explain the freedom was not a comercial construct to gain revenue? Did any LGBT even question it or refuse it?

NO!, without battering a eyelid every LGBT business removed 30 years of international culture, history and standing as a minority from the UK LGBT community, without battering an eye lid to full on direct state discrimination, and then paid the full financial charge to Westminster Council for willingly accepting that discrimination, and destroying every ounce of dignity there might have been left. Why? Who are we anymore? Do we know why we fight for human rights? Do we know what we are as a minority? Why did these LGBT businesses not know what that flag was and why did not gay rights groups inform them of the civil human rights breach situation that had been committed? Why is it LGBT activist and rights groups become confused when the government and state endlessly state: that the LGBT community demand special rights?. Was it deliberately targeted solely at the LGBT community?, Did anyone check to see if it was just the LGBT community, because if it was, it is direct state discrimination.

[Gay.com reported: [So far, the flag has been removed from a number of gay bars in Soho. Other flags have also been taken down. A spokesperson for Westminster council told the BBC that the issue was a structural one. "Placing a flag pole on the exterior of a building is a structural change that the establishment would need planning permission," she said. However Livingston said he wanted to see the flags "restored to their rightful place as soon as possible".]

If this is true, why did Westminster council wait 30 years before telling the LGBT community who have had the Freedom Flags flying on Compton Street since 1972 when the LGBT community designed the flag as universal declaration to represent them selves as a minority. Well I did some investigation of my own, and I went from Soho Square, to Perth Street, to Oxford street, to China town, to Covent Garden, to Leicester Square, to Piccadilly Circus, to Regent Street and into every non LGBT business that had a minority flag symbol strung up outside their establishments, that specifically represented a minority, not a nation. What did I find: Not one non LGBT business within 1 square miles the whole of the Soho area that flew a minority symbol outside their establishment, was even aware that they might need planning permission, let alone have any knowledge that the council were targeting businesses with minority flag simbolisms outside establishments, well only certain minorities it seems. I dont know about you, but I do believe that qualifies as a problem.

Even though I do not agree with his association, only one man [Ken Livingston] voice the true reason why the flags should be put back to rightful place.

[Gay.com reported: [Westminster Council has accused Ken Livingstone of driving an "artificial wedge" between them and the city's gay community, in the row over whether gay rainbow flags should be allowed to fly in Soho. In a letter to the mayor, the council's conservative leader Simon Milton has accused him of acting irresponsibly in the argument. He says that, rather than forcing gay businesses to remove rainbow flags, the council is asking them to apply for planning permission so they can fly the flags. Livingstone accused the council of "offending" the city's LGBT population, implying that the removal of rainbow flags from gay bars, clubs and businesses was an attack on cultural "identity". Despite a spokesperson apparently claiming the flags were being used as advertising, Mr Milton says the argument is more about the logistics of planning - "I think they (people) will be rather more offended by your contemptible attempt to drive an artificial wedge between the council and the gay community for party political purposes," the BBC reports him as writing. "Provided it is not out of keeping in size or scale with the streetscape, I am confident that members of the planning committee will be sympathetic," he promised. Meanwhile, the majority of clubs and bars around the Soho area of London have taken down their flags, after being threatened with fines. Business owners were told they could be fined for as much as £250 a day should they continue to fly the flags without permission.]

All the LGBT community have ever done, is fight for equal rights, to be "seen equally as apart of the rest of society" and one assumes the LGBT community believe they are equal to heterosexuals with "every moral equivalence". And one assumes they believe that, not "just" because they believe they are equal, but because they believe they are a globally spanning human minority; part of every country, every city, every people, minority, community, race, and every ethnicity of colour & creed of the human spectrum, just like Heterosexual society. They believe they are you're neighbours, you're blood relations, you're family and next of kin, you're grandparents, you're uncles, you're aunts, you're nieces, you're nephews, you're mothers, you're fathers, you're brothers, you're sisters, you're daughters, you're sons, and you're friends… Just like Heterosexual society.

In 1967, over 37 years ago, was the first time in UK history the LGBT could actually come together and visually establish themselves as a minority of people without being criminalized on sight by the state. They are the only global minority that do not wage war or bare arms or discriminate against "any other people" and could if they wanted too, like many domestically segregated minority's that have. For a very simple reason, they never have. Unlike Heterosexual society; the LGBT community in 37 years have unknowingly created something that Heterosexual society have never achieved in the history of the mankind, and what multiculturalism actually is… Because as a people and a minority, even though they believe and know they come from every spectrum of human existence equally as Heterosexual society does.

They don’t disband and "segregate themselves" to hundreds of specifically different separate colour, race, creed, ethnicity & cultural LGBT communities distinctive only to their own differences. All they have is a community social ground, were they actually believet and see themselves to be "one people". And interact with each other as "One single minority" with one goal, based on "one trait" that makes them equal to the opposite minority, and makes them one single minority... And when they're there… They Are "United", Without Difference!…

The LGBT community are the only human minority on this planet that have created a flag that represents themselves perfectly, and in a way that no other people, race, creed or colour or country on the planet has ever designed or flown. A flag with every colour of the rainbow that not only has a meaning for every individual spectrum colour in the flag, it also represents every global LGBT minority by race, ethnicity creed & colour "as one". A flag called "Freedom" created over 30 years ago, not long after what most people think Homosexuality is was legalised, Is what Homosexuals called being legally allowed to breath…

Maybe the LGBT community haven't given themselves enough credit. The only draw back is, between the two global majorities Heterosexual society and the LGBT community, the LGBT community are the smallest majority. So as a minority of people, symbols that represent freedom from oppression should be kept sacred and understood.

When a striving minorities own community businesses's are more blindly interested in looking statutorily compliant for financial reasons to a directly discriminating state who enforce specifically targeted discrimination, than expressing any form of principles, standards, integrity or dignity on protecting what is important, they piss on their own..

Its "that" that makes them their own worst enemy, equal to the oppositions bias beliefs, by completely defeating the purpose of a minority fighting an oppression, and confirming the worst perceptions of society, government, state and religion to continually act against them…

Westminster council should now give every penny back, or give it to an HIV & Aids charity and apologise to the LGBT community with a national press statment.