New Brunswick town's mayor defends policy that prohibits Pride banners on lampposts

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A New Brunswick mayor is defending her town's new policy that will prohibit Pride banners from being displayed on lampposts in the community -- a move a local LGBTQ group says sends a harmful message.

During a council meeting Tuesday, Woodstock, N.B., Mayor Trina Jones said the past practice of hanging Pride banners in the town will end under a policy passed in November that says lamppost banners will be reserved for promoting Woodstock-area tourism or heritage.

Amanda Lightbody, the head of non-profit LGBTQ+ organization The Rainbow Crosswalk, says the removal of the rainbow-coloured Pride flags that have hung on lampposts in the summer for several years is "a step back" for the community.

"Those in our community who are anti-LGBTQIA, when they see something that's been up there that they don't like -- that they hate -- being removed with no real explanation, they take that as a signal from the government that these people (council) are like us. That these people don't like the queer community as well," Lightbody said in an interview Friday.

She added that the town's policy is already being lauded in homophobic hate groups online.

In an emailed statement Friday, Jones declined to be interviewed and said council is satisfied with the information shared at its recent meeting.

At that meeting, Jones insisted the policy was not aimed at the Pride flag. She added that the town is "not defined" by its previous practice of displaying the flag on lampposts for six weeks of the year.

"I think it's important for us all to take a step back and try and determine why a flag that is meant to unify appears to be having the opposite effect and is creating division in multiple ways," Jones said.

In 2017, a newly painted Pride rainbow sidewalk in the western New Brunswick town was vandalized before being promptly repainted. Lightbody's group is named after this incident and is inspired by "the spirit of the people that rallied around in support" after that vandalism.

Lightbody said the council at the time eventually decided it was too expensive to keep repainting the rainbow sidewalk, so instead the town displayed Pride banners for six weeks in the summer.

Since Tuesday's council meeting, Lightbody said a number of local businesses have reached out and have offered to display Pride flags in their storefronts.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 3, 2024.

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