L.A.’s radical LGBT activists were exultant Monday when city officials removed a group of street signs in the Silver Lake community that the activists called “homophobic” because of why they were originally erected decades ago.
The east-central L.A. community is a hipster’s paradise, certainly, but in the 1990s, local residents were vexed when gays began cruising the area looking for one-night-stands with other gays. They felt the streets had become dangerous because cars were randomly making U-turns in the streets all night long to head back down the street.
So the officials instituted new traffic rules and put up “No U-Turn” signs and other signs warning “No Cruising.”
In response to residents’ complaints about rowdiness, noise, unsafe driving and unsafe behavior, the city council also passed an ordinance restricting drivers from passing through the same area twice within a six-hour period between midnight and 6 a.m.
Gay activists complained that the traffic rules were discriminatory and were meant solely to prevent gays from hooking up, an act that isn’t good for any neighborhood.
Now the signs are officially history. At the removal ceremony, L.A. City Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez even explained away the act of hooking up for one-night stands as just an example of gays looking for “human connection,” according to a report by KCAL-TV.
“Cruising, of course, meant something very different. It meant an opportunity for the LGBT community to try to find human connection and intimacy,” he said at a small gathering to celebrate the removal of the signs.
Well, that doesn’t seem so “very different” at all, does it? Isn’t that just a more flowery description of hook-ups and one-night stands?
Drag queen and Silver Lake Neighborhood Council member Maebe A. Girl (Yes, that is the name he uses) was thrilled at the demise of the signs they claimed were oppressing the LGBT community.
“I was also surprised that these U-turn signs were still up, and at first, they seem a little … ‘Oh, OK, it’s just a “No U-Turn” sign,’ but when you learn the history of it, and you realize that these were used to profile gay people, it’s so important that we have these removed,” he told KABC-TV.
Oddly, the Silver Lake council voted to eliminate the signs 10 years ago, but many were still up until this week.
Another L.A. drag queen was thrilled to know that the evil signs were taken down and was glad the oppression was finally coming to an end, even though he never knew they existed until this month.
Drag queen Pickle, who recently joined the LGBTQ commission in Los Angeles County, said that he was glad to see the “insidious” signs removed, the Lost Angeles Times reported.
Pickle added that the nasty signs were so bad he and other local members of the gay community “didn’t have any context for” them.
On the other hand, he also admitted that all this oppression slipped past his radar when he noted, “I was unaware of those signs and never would have found [them].” Apparently, the signs were so oppressive, no one noticed them.
The activists won the battle on the signs. And there is more to come, Girl told the Times. He also urged transgender people to run for office like he did.
“We are living in an era with where there are, annually, hundreds of bills being introduced discriminating against transgender people,” he said. “If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu. And queer people are very much on the menu right now.”
One wonders if girls who are losing their sports to men competing as women would agree.
