Destruction of Pride flag at Halifax home raises concerns about rise in hate-motivated acts in N.S.

Susanne Litke says she learned that a group of people approached her front porch before they began cutting this flag to pieces. The remnants of the flag are seen in this photo. (Hafsa Arif/CTV Atlantic)

Susanne Litke was working from home on April 5 when she heard a knock on her door to find the Pride flag she had hanging on her front porch torn to shreds.

“It was against my personhood,” Litke tells CTV Atlantic. “It felt like a deep hit.”

Litke is a queer lawyer and advocate who frequently works to support the queer and trans community through the organization The Nova Scotia Rainbow Project.

Throughout her years of advocacy, Litke said that while she has received hate through social media, she has never dealt with anything like this.

“I get nasty messages with the work I do with the queer community but not on my front porch.”

Through her neighbour, Litke learned that a group of people approached her front porch before they began cutting the flag to pieces.

After picking up the remnants of the flag, Litke took a picture of it and shared the impact on social media. She said she received an outpouring of support from the community.

“That gave me the strength to actually call the police and say that this happened and that they need to be on the lookout for people who are doing these acts of violence against the queer community.”

Although the majority of the messages Litke received from friends and family were supportive, others expressed their concerns of hanging the Pride flag outside their home.

“People spoke about removing the flags they have hanging outside their home because they didn’t want someone doing the same thing to them.”

This is not the first time hate-motivated acts have been recently reported in the Nova Scotia community.

Last week, the Pride flag at a Tantallon high school was burned. Prior to that, a business in Lawrencetown had vandals rub human feces on the Pride flag they had hanging outside their storefront.

According to psychologist, Dr. Dayna Lee-Baggley, hate-motivated behaviour is in part a result of the social culture legitimizing this behaviour.

“There is a lot of rhetoric in the U.S. that is unchecked, [which] becomes legitimized behavior, so culturally it becomes more normative and acceptable,” she explained.

With queer and trans-related issues hitting headlines across the U.S, Lee-Baggley explained that people exposed to a lot of news about the U.S. can begin to observe that behaviour and normalize it.

“Our brains don’t distinguish U.S versus Canada. Our unconscious brain doesn’t think that this is just the U.S. It’s not behaviour that is observing and saving in our memory as behaviour that is now normative.”

The other part of the reason Lee-Baggley said that the province is seeing more reports of hate-motivated acts like this as a result of cognitive fatigue and burnout from the pandemic.

“They have less self-control and less of an ability to problem solve and think through long-term consequences of their actions.”

Having this incident occur on her front steps, Litke said it is clear to her that more work needs to be done.

“We’ve got to get out there and be more visible and be more responsive to hate by providing education and compassion to those people who hate us.”

Litke said she was informed by Halifax Regional Police they would not be able to lay charges or do anything further for the incident.

Litke’s friends have now bought her a new Pride flag, which she said she will be hanging proudly outside her front porch once again.