Community members have rallied around a store owned by a married same-sex couple after vandals repeatedly tore down rainbow flags displayed outside of their business. Shortly before the December 7 opening of the Bees Knees General Store and Bakery in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia, the bakery’s owners — Sue Littleton and her newlywed wife Candice Zaina — found that the rainbow flag outside of their storefront had been ripped down. Littleton told the CBC, “We thought, ‘Well, it’s just kids being mischievous in the middle of the night. We didn’t think too much of it.”
But then, their replacement flags were vandalized three more times. The most recent time occurred on Christmas Eve. On that occasion, someone ripped down their Pride flag and their Mi’kmaq flag, a Christian flag representing regional Native Canadians who first came into contact with European settlers. Whoever ripped the flags down also placed human feces on top of them. The business owners installed security cameras, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are investigating these acts of vandalism as possible hate crimes. But Littleton and Zaina said they experienced an “incredible” outpouring of support from the local community since news of the vandalism spread. Zaina said, “The support has come from all sorts of different demographics.”
