If you haven’t seen the story yet, down in Fort Lauderdale there’s an LGBT-focused area called Sebastian St. where a large modern LGBT flag has been painted on the street. Footage has been coming out of it being vandalized by a truck that decided to peel out while sitting on top of the flag, leaving it scuffed and blackened.
— Kuba (@Jakub37349748) March 9, 2023
On Wednesday, more footage emerged that showed some cyclists doing their best to scuff up the flag as well.
After it was only recently fixed, bicyclists have now left their mark on a pride flag mural painted on a South #Florida street.
– 7 News pic.twitter.com/RyWYMMFCJC
— The Daily Sneed™🕗 (@Tr00peRR) March 9, 2023
According to WSVN-TV, the cleanup process has begun to repair the flag and police are now trying to track down the vandals. The station began interviewing people about it, and the general consensus is that people should leave others and their things alone:
“Nobody is stopping them for living their life, and they shouldn’t stop someone else,” said Diane Cohen, who was visiting Fort Lauderdale Beach. “There’s so many things that need to be fixed in this world that this is how people are spending their time, they need to re-prioritize.”
The flag was unveiled in mid-February, and now there have been two separate occasions of people defacing the art by leaving skid marks and tire tracks.
People visiting the area and seeing the marks are disappointed.
“Why would somebody make the effort to scuff up somebody’s else’s ‘life’?” said Nat Cohen, gesturing with air quotes at the end of his sentence.
“Let people be proud of who they are,” said Diane Cohen. “Go be proud of who you are.”
Even Fort Lauderdale’s Democrat Mayor Dean Trantalis weighed in on the vandalization saying the city “will not tolerate those people who try to exhibit hate in our community. It’s not wanted. It doesn’t belong here, and it’s no longer part of our history.”
I’ll start by saying that vandalization is wrong and people shouldn’t be destructive against things just because they’re different, and with that out of the way I need to point out some odd things about this story.
Let’s start with a point that brings this entire story into question…
Why was there a fixed camera on this mural?
I wouldn’t have thought much of it if the footage we got just came from a person recording it from their cell phone, but someone fixed a camera onto the mural as its central focus. It’s not a camera that’s focused on a doorway with the mural in the background, nor is it looking down the street. It’s right on the mural.
I can’t help but suspect that this was done with the hope that someone would vandalize the flag on the street so that it could become a story that reinforces the belief that there’s a general hatred of the LGBT community out there, especially when it comes to the “T.” Fostering that idea allows for the isolationist narrative to continue, and the belief that there is a battle to fight against hatred and bigotry with the LGBT community on the good side.
The camera being focused on the flag with (likely) the obvious hope of capturing bigotry also brings up the question of whether or not the vandalization is legitimate. If no one was scuffing the mural then it would be up to those concerned to make a situation to scuff it themselves and make it look like it was done by random people out of some unnecessary hatred.
Is that the case? We can’t be sure until the investigation is complete, but I’m willing to bet that if we don’t hear about the end result of this investigation, then that’s probably what happened.
Moreover, the fact that the mayor weighed in makes the story more suspicious since the mayor of a popular city commenting on a crime within his jurisdiction will give the story more legs and possibly make it go national, which it did. Media manipulation isn’t exactly uncommon, and Trantalis’s inclusion into the story set off some alarms.
Probably not so ironically, the idea from those interviewed that people should live and let live is something that should definitely apply here, but it’s one that the LGBT activist community should adhere to themselves. Their constant attempts to push their agenda and beliefs on others have become a point of contention around the nation to the point where people are actively becoming embittered and dedicated to pushing back against these activists.
The brutal truth is that the more the activists push into people’s lives, the more likely these vandalizations will happen.
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