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Opinion

Why all Jews can sit under the rainbow flag

February 29, 2016 15:01
surat shaan
3 min read

February has been busy but brilliant. In fact, February is my favourite month of the year. There are no significant Jewish festivals, I know, but there is a lot to celebrate for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, amongst them of course quite a few Jews.

LGBT History Month is a month-long annual observance of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender history. It originated in the United States and was first celebrated in 1994. In the UK, it first took place in February 2005, and has been celebrated annually each February ever since. The event came in the wake of the abolition of Section 28 in 2003 (Clause 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 said that a local authority "shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality").It aims to challenge homophobia, biphobia and transphobia and promote equality and diversity.

This year’s LGBT HM theme was Religion, Belief and Philosophy, and of course this was particularly great news for us LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bi, trans and queer/questioning) Jews.

Before I talk more about the exciting calendar of events we saw this month, let me explain a bit more about the LGBTQ+ alphabet soup. It can be a little confusing. The term "gay" has often been used to refer to anyone who was attracted to people of the same sex or had a non-normative gender presentation. However this is not really correct and not very inclusive. Identity has become pretty much an individual thing, and therefore the acronym to describe people’s sexualities has become an ever-growing spectrum of identities and communities. The rainbow flag is often used to symbolise this diversity. As a matter of fact, there are probably more identities in the ‘queer’ community now than there are colours in the rainbow.