Bad news always draws headlines.
We get it. We’re in the news business.
So, it was disappointing to see that for the second year in a row, Pride Month was tainted in Norton when a sign on the Town Common was vandalized with hateful words and four other Pride signs were stolen, including three on the Common.
In last year’s crime, someone was observed on a security camera urinating on a Pride flag at a home. Days before that incident, more than a dozen Pride flags were swiped from the same home, nearby businesses and the common.
A social media post of a Pride-colored cake at the Old Grist Mill Tavern in Seekonk also made news recently after drawing hundreds of comments.
“Don’t go woke. You will go broke,” one opponent wrote.
One customer told WJAR-TV in Providence that she and her husband say they hadn’t eaten at The Old Grist Mill Tavern in 30 years but felt inspired to come all the way from Cape Cod after seeing the negative comments.
“We decided to come support the restaurant because bullies be gone,” she said.
Yes, there are bullies and bigots out there, and they tend to make their presence at times like this, Pride Month, when the nation and the world are celebrating the LGBTQ community.
That celebration began more than half a century ago.
In the early hours of June 28, 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York’s Greenwich Village, and began hauling customers outside. New York’s gay community, fed up after years of harassment by authorities, broke out in neighborhood riots that went on for three days.
The uprising became a catalyst for an emerging gay rights movement as organizations such as the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activists Alliance were formed. A year after the Stonewall riots, the nation’s first Gay Pride marches were held.
Today, the celebrations have spread from big cities to small towns. Most area communities are holding Pride Month events.
For instance, just after the vandalism was reported in Norton, over 200 people gathered at its Everett Leonard Park to celebrate the LGBTQ community.
“There is no place for hate here,” said Renee Deley-Mahan, a former selectwoman who helped organize the event. “The community has shown quite a bit of support, more and more people are asking for signs to display.”
We believe that response — like the effort made by the Cape Cod couple seeking some Pride cake — are more representative of public sentiment about gay rights.
That is especially true here in Massachusetts, which can take pride in being the first state to legalize same-sex marriage.
A Gallup poll last year said that 71 percent of Americans support gay rights, up from 27 percent in 1999. Even 10 years ago, barely half of all Americans had positive views of the LGBTQ community.
That view has flip-flopped.
So, ignore the headlines and celebrate Pride Month — possibly with some cake.