Gay Pride flag attacks mount amid online challenges by extremist groups

Police in Nebraska are investigating the burning of a gay Pride flag as a hate crime in the latest of a rash of recent attacks on the LGBTQ+ community believed to be driven in part by online challenges.

In the past week alone, Pride flags have been stolen, slashed or burned in at least five states, including California, Utah, Arizona, Nebraska and Pennsylvania. That’s on top of similar incidents in California and New York in May, including a man that defecated on a pride flag in Manhattan.

The thefts and vandalism come as online extremists have been spreading a new hashtag in recent weeks that encourages followers to damage, destroy or steal Pride flags wherever they see them, said Sarah Moore, an anti-LGBTQ+ extremism analyst for the Anti-Defamation League and the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.

“We do know that this is a trend and we know a lot of this stuff is being driven by different campaigns online … in both extremists forums like Telegram and also on mainstream social media forums like Twitter,” Moore said.

“They are advocating for a destroy-the-Pride-flag challenge, or they call them capture-the-flag challenges, where they advocate for their followers to go out in really creative ways and capture and deface or set fire to Pride flags from private residences and businesses across the country,” she said.

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Recent incidents

In Omaha on June 2, a masked man set fire to a Pride flag being displayed outside a home in what’s being investigated as a hate crime, said the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office .

The sheriff’s office said that home surveillance video shows that the man appears to use accelerant before igniting the flag and fleeing. They’re still looking for the suspect, who may have burned his hands during the attack. A Pride flag was previously stolen from the home in April, also by a masked man.

In another suspected hate crime in Tempe, Arizona on Tuesday, someone took down a Pride flag outside the Phoenix suburb’s City Hall and burned it.

In the Los Angeles suburb of Huntington Beach on June 3, police arrested a teenage boy on suspicion of ripping a Pride flag while pulling it down from a home and using derogatory language. The Los Angeles Times reported that officers found a group of nearby teens who had two other Pride flags with them.

In Pennsylvania, one candy shop has had its Pride flag stolen repeatedly in recent days, and there’s been a spate of Pride flag thefts throughout the Salt Lake City area. More than 75 have been stolen in San Jose, California.

‘State of emergency’

Meanwhile for the first time in its 40-year history, the Human Rights Campaign on Tuesday declared a “state of emergency” for LGBTQ+ Americans amid an increase in legislation targeting their rights.

“The sharp rise in anti-LGBTQ+ measures has spawned a dizzying patchwork of discriminatory state laws that have created increasingly hostile and dangerous environments for LGBTQ+ people,” according to a news release by the Human Rights Campaign.

The hostile climate has prompted the group to issue a national warning and create a downloadable guidebook for the LGBTQ+ community. The guidebook includes a summary of state laws, “know your rights” information and other resources.

“LGBTQ+ Americans are living in a state of emergency. The multiplying threats facing millions in our community are not just perceived — they are real, tangible and dangerous," Kelley Robinson,, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement. “In many cases they are resulting in violence against LGBTQ+ people, forcing families to uproot their lives and flee their homes in search of safer states, and triggering a tidal wave of increased homophobia and transphobia that puts the safety of each and every one of us at risk.”

President Joe Biden on Thursday blamed “extreme officials” pushing “hateful bills” for the onslaught of attacks against the LGBTQ community and pledged that gay Americans would always have the support of his administration.

“We have some hysterical and, I would argue prejudiced, people who are engaged in all that you see going on around the country,” Biden said during a White House news conference with British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. “It’s an appeal to fear, and it’s an appeal that is totally, thoroughly, unjustified and ugly.”

On Saturday, Biden will host what the administration says is the largest-ever Pride celebration to be held at the White House.

The next threat

Between the legislation, the attacks on flags and dustups like fights on Tuesday outside a school board meeting in Glendale, California, have all combined to make the LGBTQ+ community feel like it’s under fire, Moore said.

She pointed to the April firebombing of a church in Ohio the week leading up to several drag show events being held at the facility.

Aimenn Penny, 20, of Alliance, Ohio, is charged with violating the Church Arson Prevention Act and three other counts for throwing Molotov cocktails in the Community Church of Chesterland in northeast Ohio. It's unclear whether Penny has an attorney.

“I think the LGBTQ+ community right now is on edge,” Moore said. “There is a feeling that there's something different about Pride month this year as opposed to other years and so I think folks are on the lookout for what might be the next threat around the corner.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Pride flags stolen, burned across US amid surge in online hate