Flags removed ahead of Pride event = hate crime?

Presumably someone owns the flags?

If you own a car and I deliberately drive it away and leave it on a beach have I committed no crime? Or I remove your bag, or your jacket and do the same?

It might just be my Granny, who is vexiphobic?

Although interestingly she does not have cosyphobia which is why we get a knitted one every year at Christmas.

(I would actually prefer a flag - but I can't see how to tell her.😐)

Women have been pursued by the police for putting up ribbon in suffragette colours, and removed from the Scottish parliament for wearing suffragette colours. Yet that's not a hate crime because the government are too misogynist to make misogyny a hate crime.
I'm really over people policing flags. Is there any evidence these were deliberately stolen as opposed to blowing away or being borrowed by drunk students?

The parade went ahead as planned on Saturday afternoon and finished around 1pm, according to the report.

Not a very big parade then.

Removing Pride flags sets a tone of hostility and intimidation to gay people, and fosters an environment where more serious crimes against us become more commonplace.

The rainbow flag is fine as it's everyone but the progress flag is deeply problematic.

It might be pro-trans but there are several emerging issues which demonstrate it is essentially pro-homophobic at this point.

So I do think it's complex.

The police are wasting a huge amount of time on this though. Hate crime isn't removal of flag, because you don't know the intention of the removal and that's important.

Why? Well to give an example. If it's the progress flag is removed by a lesbian who feels like it's homophobic and an act of intimidation, good luck getting a prosecution.

They don't, though, do they?

Given all the unsolved violent crimes, flags shouldn't just be low down on the list of priorities, they shouldn't make it onto the list at all.

The problem is that the rainbow flag is now seen as highly political. If the Reform party were holding a rally and people stole their flags, would that be seen as a hate crime? Probably not.

As an LGB person I find the rainbow flags quite aggressively disturbing since they represent a movement that actively seeks to suppress and exclude homosexuals and sees them as 'sexual racists'. They're not a neutral message, are they?

I wonder if the removal of suffragette flags or Women's Rights flags would be as vigorously defended should someone want to remove them and their, er, messaging.

Sauce for the goose and all that.

Putin and Orban would be proud of you, you have swallowed the rhetoric nicely 😂

As the report states 'an unknown group' and you seem to have knowledge that it has been committed by 'certain hate groups', one assumes that you have contacted the Police to pass on this information as requested in the article. Would help with the inquiries presumably.

Oh come on Op be honest,we all know what you mean by certain hate groups.Women who are sick to the back teeth of the agps and fetishes who long ago bulldozed their way into the LGB and turned pride into a freak show.It’s. longer about gay and lesbian rights.It’s not hate that perpetrated this ‘crime’ it’s frustration and anger.

Early hours of the morning on an island of barely 4000 people sounds like some people who were pissed rather than an organised ‘hate group’. Although who knows what the ‘wee frees’ might get up to.

Well, except from Holyrood!

Really obnoxious behaviour.
Including the fly tipping flags on the beach.

Lesbian and Gay people deserve better than to have their march sabotaged.

Suffragette flags, Adult Human Female banners, Palestine Flags, Star of David, and the Tufty Club. No one has the right to ban anyone else’s flag.

I love how in other threads FWR pretends that the board is not homophobic 🤣

I wouldn't call it a hate crime as such- in my mind, "hate crime" brings to mind physical assault or harassment- but I would describe it as hate-motivated vandalism at least. I'd certainly be a little wary of being openly gay around there; the removal and dumping of the flags feels threatening, like a warning, even if it's not a "hate crime" in the way I tend to think of them.

I wish the police would take the messaging of the f*ing flag seriously.

Destruction of property not belonging to those who did it perhaps?

Plus:

Any crime can be prosecuted as a hate crime if the offender has either:

demonstrated hostility based on race, religion, disability, sexual orientation or transgender identity
Or

been motivated by hostility based on race, religion, disability, sexual orientation or transgender identity

Indeed. What do you think the crime might be?

That’s not the definition of a hate crime.

That's why they are investigating. It's probably much more than just removing a flag

Yes. It is clearly a hate crime.

It's not difficult for you to look up the definition of that is it?