Firebugs Torch Pride Flag, Spark Hate Crime Inquiry

An LGTBQ internet show was being filmed inside a gay business in Baltimore even as firebugs set fire to the store's pride flag, reports the Baltimore Sun.

The Boston edition of "Queer Conversations" was filming an episode at LGBTQ-themed greeting card and apparel shop Same Gender Love when the anti-gay arson took place. Pride Center of Maryland Board President Merrick Moses was the guest being interviewed at the time.

Moses, the manager of the store, and the show's host, LaToi Moses, rushed outside, the article said. The flag was partially burned but not entirely destroyed. Security video shows two men apparently fleeing the scene of what authorities are now reportedly investigating as a hate crime.

Moses took to Facebook to document the incident. "Why burn our flag?" he wondered in his post, which included pictures of the damaged flag. "What's the purpose? Why can't LGBTQ people live in peace?"

Moses may have answered his own question with remarks to the media, in which he decried the arson attack, saying, "When someone burns this flag, it says we don't respect your humanity and we think you don't belong here."

Pride flags have frequently been targets of homophobic firebugs. In one instance, a virulently anti-LGBTA Catholic priest incinerated a Pride flag in a bizarre "exorcism ritual." As reported here at EDGE at the time, the flag had been stored in a Chicago church, a relic from more gay-friendly times under a different priest. But when Paul Kalchik came to Resurrection Church, he made his anti-gay animus blazingly clear – and he did it in violation of direct orders from church superiors not to torch the flag.