‘A direct act of hate’: Rainbow flag burned at Buddhist temple in Pasadena
A rainbow flag that hung from a fence at the Pasadena Buddhist Temple was set afire and burned, and police are investigating the incident.
“We are taking it very seriously because it is an act of hate,” said Gregory Gibbs, the temple’s resident minister. “We try to be peaceful and accepting, but we’re going to have to be more cautious now.”
The hand-painted pride flag was made by local artists and had been displayed at the temple for the last few years, Gibbs said.
The City Council voted in 2021 to fly the rainbow LGBTQ pride flag for six weeks each spring. A newly passed measure reverses that, limiting which flags can be raised.
The burned remnants were found by people at the temple on Tuesday morning, he said. As they were cleaning up, a neighbor told them she had doused the fire with a garden hose at about 7 p.m. Monday but hadn’t seen who lighted it ablaze.
The pride flag that was burned had been placed on the wire fence along with a Black Lives Matter flag, which was untouched. Also unscathed were another rainbow flag and Black Lives Matter flag, which hang from high on the temple’s wooden gate.
“Nothing else in the neighborhood seems to have been torched that night,” Gibbs said, “so it seems to be a direct act of hate against LGBTQ people, maybe also against Buddhists.”
About two-thirds of the temple’s Buddhist community are Japanese Americans, Gibbs said. He said those who frequent the temple didn’t know if the flag was burned solely because of their support for the LGBTQ+ community “or because most of us are Japanese, or if they just didn’t get around to burning the Black Lives Matter flag, and they just hate us because we support anyone who is marginalized or oppressed.”
The rainbow flag was burned more than two weeks after an unidentified man came to the temple complaining about both flags and asking that they be taken down, Gibbs said. He said those at the temple had a video of the man who came on April 6, and they shared it with police.
A man who was slashed in the face by a person with a machete last month at a Chatsworth bus station has filed a claim, a precursor to a lawsuit, against the city of Los Angeles.
Police are treating the case as vandalism and arson, and investigating it as a possible hate crime, said Lt. Monica Cuellar, spokesperson for the Pasadena police. She urged anyone with information about the man who complained about the flags to contact police.
Gibbs said he expected the temple’s board members would decide to put up another pride flag to replace the one that was burned.
“We’re certainly not going to reverse our position,” Gibbs said. “We’re not going to change our policy because someone does some dangerous vandalism on our temple and expresses hate. We’re going to continue just as we have.”
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