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LGBT traffic symbols in London's Trafalgar Square

LONDON, England, July 20, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) — 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 celebrating sexual deviations that depart 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.