Is there a more gay-friendly capital than Reykjavík?

Walk through Iceland’s capital and Pride is everywhere. Rainbow flags fly from storefronts. Streets are painted in LGBTQ colors. Businesses and government buildings proudly proclaim their support for gay rights, queer rights and equality.

Then look a little closer.

On those same Reykjavík streets are Zionists Not Welcome stickers and other expressions of hostility toward the one country in the Middle East where LGBTQ people openly flourish: Israel.

The contradiction is hard to miss.

In Israel, gay people serve openly in government and the military. Tel Aviv Pride is one of the world’s best-known LGBTQ celebrations. Gay couples live openly. LGBTQ organizations operate publicly.

Across the Palestinian Arab territories and much of the surrounding Muslim Middle East, the reality is radically different. Hamas governs Gaza according to an Islamist ideology hostile to homosexuality. Iran criminalizes same-sex relations and has imposed the death penalty for homosexual conduct.

Yet in Reykjavík, the political sympathy often seems to run precisely backward.

The rainbow flag is supposed to say that gay rights are human rights. That should apply in Iceland, Israel, Gaza, Iran and everywhere else.

Reykjavík proudly covers itself in rainbows but should follow those colors all the way to the Middle East and ask where gay people can actually live beneath them.