London touts support for gay movement with gender-bending traffic lights
Some
of the 50 LGBT crosswalk signals put up around busy Trafalgar Square to
celebrate the Gay Pride Festival in June appear to violate an international
treaty and are still up a month later.
The
1968 Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals calls for simple images of
pedestrians only, not the medical symbols for male and female and one
established by the transgender movement.
For
the first time this year, London joined other cities such as Vienna, Seattle,
and Cornerbrook, Newfoundland, in using traffic signage that deviate from
biblical and biological sexual norms.
While
Canadian cities such as Victoria, Vancouver and Cornerbrook also have painted
over the internationally recognized roadway striping for crosswalks with a
rainbow of colors, London opted to modify 50 crosswalk signals in crowded
Trafalgar Square.
In
London, the familiar green walking man was replaced with seven different images
ranging from the circle and cross and circle and arrow symbols for male, to
silhouettes of two walking men holding hands (and forming a heart with them).
According
to a City of London news release, “The traffic signals have been designed to
show TfL’s (Transport for London’s) support for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and
Trans (LGBT+) diversity in London.”
London
Mayor Sadiq Khan said, “One of the greatest things about this city is our
differences and every Londoner should be proud of who they are. I am very proud
of our LGBT+ community here.”
Khan
then tied the crosswalk signals to the “hideous recent attack in Orlando. These
new signals show that we stand shoulder to shoulder with” the survivors and the
next of kin of those who died in the Orlando attack, he said.
Alison
Camps, director at Pride in London, said in a statement: "It's fantastic
that London is a city so keen to celebrate Pride that even traffic lights can
be used.” Transport for London also has provided performance sites for LGBT
troupers and painted a bus in the LGBT rainbow.
But
critic Peter LaBarbera mocked the LGBT lights as pandering. “The West has gone
crazy in its celebration of sexual immorality, in the name of gay pride,” the
head of Americans for Truth about Homosexuality told LifeSiteNews. “The
insatiable need of so many homosexuals and so-called transgenders to have their
aberrant identities affirmed — combined with the politicians' instinctual
pandering — has produced this taxpayer-financed folly.”
At
least part of the folly is the replacement of internationally recognized and
agreed-upon images of pedestrians with the medical symbols for male and female
and the variant for transgender.
According
to the 1968 Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals, Article 24, “Signals
for Pedestrians Only,” the only light to be used to tell a pedestrian he or she
may safely cross is a green light. Only a red light shall be used to indicate
pedestrians should not cross.
“The
red light shall preferably be in the form of a standing pedestrian or of
standing pedestrians and the green light in the form of a walking pedestrian or
of walking pedestrians.”
While
the directive does not directly address London’s hand-holding symbol, it would
seem to rule out the circles with crosses and arrows.
The
mayor’s office in London did not answer questions from LifeSiteNews about when
the LGBT signals will be removed or whether safety issues were considered.
