The Burning of the Pride Flag

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In early June of 2021, a video of a group of students who attended Cawthra Park Secondary School burning a pride flag on school property was recorded, and shared, to LGBTQIA+ students — a video that left many people feeling concerned. The video surfaced and spread across the Region of Peel and throughout Mississauga, and it served as a reminder of the deeply rooted homophobia and transphobia that resides in Canada to this day.

The video quickly resulted in a fully-fledged investigation by both Peel Public Police and the Peel District School Board. As the principal of Cawthra Park, Tyler McLeod, stated, “As a learning community, we are committed to increasing our individual and collective skills and understanding to clearly confront [discriminatory] acts and to ensure our school environment is safe.”

Although homosexuality has been decriminalized for over 50 years in Canada, it was still legal to discriminate against an individual for their sexual orientation until 1995. Civil same-sex marriage as well as parenting rights for same-sex couples were only made legal in 2005. It’s hard to believe after over 50 years of rising support for the LGBTQIA+ community that large acts of homophobia are still occurring.

June is considered Pride Month — a celebration to honor the 1969 Stonewall Uprising in Manhattan — which led to the decriminalization of homosexuality in countless countries, including Canada. The first official Pride march was held on June 28, 1970, in New York City on the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising. The rainbow flag was popularized as a symbol of the gay community by San Francisco artist Gilbert Baker in 1978. Since then, the flag has been used predominantly at gay pride events as well as to show support towards the community by allies. Since the 1990s, its symbolism has been transferred to represent the extended LGBTQIA+ community. At various times, other colors have been introduced to modify the flag design by Gilbert Baker, including black-and-brown for people of color in 2017 and white-pink-blue for transgender and queer people in 2019. Now, a commonly recognized version of the flag is a rainbow flag with red coming first, with a triangle with 5 colors — black to represent AIDS victims, a brown stripe to represent LGBTQIA+ people of color, and a light blue, pink, and white stripe to represent the transgender community.

However, the flag being burnt was the original six-striped rainbow Pride flag. The fact that the flag was burnt during Pride Month led Peel Public Police to view the incident as a hate-motivated crime. The Peel District School Board also noted that the incident was blatantly against the Peel District School Board Student Code of Conduct and made a post on their social media platforms regarding the incident.

As of June 17th of 2021, Peel Public Police has arrested two 16-year-old individuals involved in the incident, who have supposedly been referred to the Youth Pre-Charge Diversion Program. As one might imagine, the video was incredibly worrying to many students, but especially to students of Cawthra Park, the school where the individuals who burnt the flag allegedly attended. The video — which was shared on Snapchat and was sent specifically to students who were members of the LGBTQIA+ community — was immediately viewed as a threat to the community at the school. Many students who were close to the individual who shared the video felt betrayed, as this was one of their friends — somebody they went to school with and talked to everyday in their classes. Many students were disappointed in their school and felt as though it shed Cawthra Park Secondary School in the wrong light. Many LGBTQIA+ individuals expressed that had they not been learning solely online due to the state of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Peel Region, they would have been scared to even show up at their school.

The burning of the pride flag at Cawthra Park secondary school was a disturbing example of a hate-motivated attack against 2SLGBTQIA+ youth. It sadly reminds everyone of the fact that despite how much we try, there will always be people who care too much about what other people do. It’s important to recognize the fact that these things are still happening and can be a danger to minority groups. As the world continues to move forward, hopefully everyone will be able to live their lives without the threat of unwarranted violence against them for who they are.

Sources:

Published June 26, 2021

Written by Jess Moerman ~ Edited by Alex Truong ~ Graphics created by Elwin Fu

The Burning of the Pride Flag

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