N.B. news: Town won’t allowed Pride banners on lampposts [Video]

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 …