The City of West Hollywood, California, a haven for the LGBTQ+ community, lowered its rainbow flags to half-staff in memory of conservative activist Charlie Kirk — nine years after it “banned” Donald Trump from speaking.
As Breitbart News reported at the time, the city “banned” Trump — in flagrant disregard for the First Amendment — before he even became president, ostensibly because of “hate speech and violent rhetoric.”
Breitbart News reported:
In an open letter to the 87 other mayors in Los Angeles County and in an op-ed for the Advocate, West Hollywood Mayor Lindsey Horvath wrote that the Republican presidential frontrunner would be barred from making campaign appearances in her city in an effort to shield the community from the candidate’s of “hate speech and violent rhetoric.”
“I firmly believe it is the responsibility of those of us in leadership to use our words and actions wisely. That is why I took the opportunity to express how deeply disturbed I am by the Trump presidential campaign and to call out their destructive tactics,” Horvath, 34, wrote in the op-ed.
“The campaign has gone beyond its right to express a political point of view or policy differences, which we all have to greater or lesser degrees. The hate speech and implicit calls to violence coming from Trump and his campaign are beyond the pale and have no place in any community in our country,” she added.
Remarkably, West Hollywood has taken a different approach with Charlie Kirk, who was critical of the LGBTQ+ movement — though the city has also taken criticism, as Pink News reported:
The City of West Hollywood has responded to a backlash over the decision to lower LGBTQ+ Pride flags to half-mast in tribute to right-wing pundit Charlie Kirk, who was shot dead in Utah last week.
Among those lowered to what Americans call half-staff, were two LGBTQ+ Pride flags outside the VCA TLC Animal Hospital on Santa Monica Boulevard.
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A spokesperson said: “The action was undertaken in accordance with the city’s Policy for Recognitions and Memorials, which acknowledges that the city follows the direction of the president in determining when flags in the city are flown at half-staff.”
Kirk also defended LGBTQ+ conservatives against extremists who said they could not be in the movement.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Zionist Conspiracy Wants You, now available on Amazon. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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