✞ Christians have torn down a flower monument depicting the rainbow flag in East Beirut
In a video published by “Soldiers of God” on Facebook, one individual shouts to the camera “This neighborhood has churches in it, and you dare put up the gay flag? You have the devil inside you.”
The flower flag was designed by members of the community who, according to the video, were given permission by the city’s authorities to construct the flag in solidarity with the LGBT community in Beirut.
“There will be no Satan in Achrafieh – this neighbourhood is for the soldiers of God” shouted another member of the group, who quoted verses from the Bible as they tore down the installation.
On Friday, the Lebanese Minister of Interior added his voice to recent calls from religious authorities to condemn all public activities relating to the LGBT community.
In an open letter, Bassam Mawlawi claimed that “sexual perversion” was spreading in Lebanese society in contradiction to Lebanese customs.
According to Helem, a rights group that advocates for the LGBT community, “the letter was accompanied by extensive homophobic and transphobic hate speech on conservative print media and on social media”, as well as similar statements from religious leaders.
Helem accused political and religious elites of stirring up hatred and “moral sexual panic” as a distraction from Lebanon’s economic and political problems.
“Regimes and institutions who have failed in providing justice, safety and security for their people often rely on attacking and sacrificing marginalized communities to distract the public from their failures and corruption” said Helem in a statement published on Saturday.
Activists and allies of the LGBT community in Lebanon are meeting to protest the minister’s letter on Sunday, outside the interior ministry in Beirut.
A Halo Around The Sun Startled PeopleiIn Ethiopia During Sunday’s Local Elections, With Many Seeing it as a Miracle or a Sign from God.
The ring of light caused by sunlight refracted by ice crystals hung in the sky for almost an hour before it finally faded and disappeared.
Some Ethiopians say it last appeared in 1991 before a military regime fell.
But the BBC’s Elizabeth Blunt in Addis Ababa says there is little chance it could augur change this time.
She says the overwhelming majority of candidates are from the government party.
Churchgoers who had flocked to see the visiting Patriarch of Alexandria, Pope Shenouda, acclaimed the phenomenon as a miracle, or at least a sign of a blessing from God.
“We accept any sign from God to encourage us in our way,” he said, “and confirm that we are going right in our way.”
Abuna Paulos, the Patriarch of Ethiopia, added his voice to those who believe in signs from God.
“If God reveals himself from the sky,” he told a press conference, “we believers do not get surprised. We only rejoice and double our efforts to thank God. Thank you, God, for revealing a sign.”
Dictatorship
But others looked for more secular implications.
Older people in Addis Ababa remember seeing the ring around the sun once before – in the last days of the Derg, the despised military dictatorship, just before its leader Mengistu Haile Mariam fled to Zimbabwe.
But there is little prospect of the government falling in these elections.
The opposition winners of the controversial elections in 2005 in urban areas never took their seats and did not stand again.
The most successful of the other opposition parties pulled out, complaining of intimidation and our correspondent says the results are almost certain to consolidate the ruling party’s hold on power.
Results have not been published yet but an election official said turnout had been massive.