As Pride flags are once again targeted, LGBTQ advocates say it’s as important as ever to fly them | CBC News

After the southwestern Ontario township of Norwich made a controversial decision last month to no longer fly the Progress Pride flag on municipal property, it didn’t take long after for people to start emailing Kim Huffman, a councillor in neighbouring Norfolk county, calling for a similar move.

It may have only been a small number of messages, but she’s making it clear she has no intention of following Norwich’s lead.

“Don’t bother wasting your time asking me to put any kind of motion forward or to have any kind of discussion regarding the Pride flag in Norfolk County,” she told CBC News. In her first term, Huffman said, she was the councillor responsible for getting the county to raise the Pride flag at its administrative building in the first place. 

Huffman says she wants her community and others, especially in rural areas, to show they are inclusive — especially for younger people who may not see the same degree of LGBTQ visibility and allyship that exists in large cities.

Norwich isn’t alone when it comes to controversies surrounding Pride flags. Other communities, such as the district of Hope, B.C., have made similar decisions to not fly the Pride flag, and a recent meeting of an Ontario Catholic school board got so heated, amid a debate of Pride flags at schools, the police had to be called.

There have also been reports across Canada of LGBTQ and transgender flags being stolen, damaged and even burned. 

WATCH | Flag protest gets heated:

Critics against Pride flag raising disrupt Catholic school board meeting

At a meeting Tuesday night, students, parents and alumni were divided on whether or not the York Catholic District School Board should raise the Pride flag in June.

Much of this has unfolded as divisive, sometimes hateful, debates about transgender rights, gender-affirming care and education about LGBTQ issues flare up on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border. 

Huffman said she believes that’s all the more reason to fly the Pride flag this year and every year.

Pride in a community

Huffman said she gets goosebumps when she see a Pride flag flying in her county because of the sense of community it represents to her. 

That was a sentiment similar to what Alex Wilson says she experienced when she saw a Pride flag raised in her northern Manitoba First Nation community three years ago — something she said was “a long time coming.” 

It was the traditional rainbow flag with the emblem of the Opaskwayak Cree Nation.

Raising a Pride flag is “a recognition that not only do we exist, but we have the right to exist,” said Wilson, a professor in the College of Education at the University of Saskatchewan, where she teaches a course called Queering Our Classrooms and Communities, among others. 

After years of progress, she said she’s surprised over the new debate over Pride flags, and LGBTQ rights and visibility, when it seems like something more likely to have been a controversial topic 35 years ago.

“[But] whenever there’s some kind of steps made forward in human rights, there’s a backlash from certain communities. And this time, the backlash is particularly focused on trans people and the queer community in general,” she said. 

Pushing back against progress

Progress on LGBTQ rights hasn’t always been linear, said Robin Metcalfe, a long-time LGBTQ rights activist based in Sheet Harbour, N.S., where he is also involved in organizing the seaside community’s Pride activities.

“In recent years, trans people in particular have been in the front line of fighting for their rights, and it’s been a very hard fight,” Metcalfe said. 

In the U.S. there have been more than 500 bills brought forward so far in 2023, dozens of which have already passed, that target gender-affirming care, bathroom use, the participation of trangender women and girls in sports, the use of preferred pronouns, drag performances and education about gender identity and sexuality.

That has contributed to anti-LGBTQ discourse throughout the U.S. but also in Canada because “we’re part of the same larger cultural zone,” said Metcalfe.

“Right-wing forces and very homophobic and sexist and racist forces are feeling more empowered to speak right now and more entitled and probably feeling somewhat threatened because the order [of privilege] is changing,” he said.

He says he believes most people are against forms of hate, such as homophobia, racism, and sexism, and he’s hopeful those people will continue to unite behind the LGBTQ community as it faces efforts to push back against progress.

The flap over flags

Any flag is a symbol that can be “inspiring to one group [but] will be reviled by another,” said James Ferrigan, the treasurer of the North American Vexillological Association, an organization for flag experts and enthusiasts.

With Pride flags, some will see it as celebrating diversity and inclusion, he said, while others will view it as “a political symbol which they perhaps find threatening.”

He has witnessed the evolution of the Pride flag, from its humble beginnings to becoming an internationally recognized symbol — he worked at the Paramount flag shop in San Francisco alongside activist and artist Gilbert Baker, who created the original rainbow flag in 1978. 

The flag has evolved and been recreated in the 45 years since, most notably with the Progress Pride flag created in 2018 by artist Daniel Quasar.

It’s a variation on the traditional six-colour rainbow flag that incorporates chevrons of pink, light blue and white to represent transgender and non-binary people and black and brown chevrons for people of colour. 

It has become widely used by governments — including the Canadian government — businesses and communities around the world, and it was the version of the Pride flag at the heart of the situation in Norwich.

Exclusion not a path to equality

In the case of Norwich, the township’s council decided in a 3-2 vote, with the mayor tipping the balance, to prohibit all non-civic flags from flying on municipal property, even though the Pride flag was the focus of the decision.

The logic presented by the councillor who brought the issue forward was that municipal, provincial and Canada flags unite everyone without singling out any one group.

“To open the door to flying flags that represent any particular group, organization, or ideology, will only divide rather than unite,” Coun. John Scholten said at the April 25 council meeting.

Neither Wilson nor Metcalfe agree with that logic

“Putting up the flag is in fact saying you want peace and harmony,” Metcalfe said, because it signals the community is accepting of all of its diverse citizens.

Wilson called it a “cop out,” saying outlawing everything that’s different isn’t a way to create equality. She explained not everyone is united under the Canadian flag either. 

“We know that with Indigenous people, we know that with certain newcomer groups, we know that with queer people,” Wilson said. 

Raising a Pride flag, she said, is both an opportunity for people to learn about and acknowledge the history of marginalized groups, as well as their current challenges, and to help rectify some of the past.