Hamilton police are now investigating as a hate crime the defacing of several Hamilton Fringe Festival posters.
They were promoting two plays; S.C.U.M.: A Manifesto, a satire about Valerie Solanas, the radical feminist who shot Andy Warhol, and Les Mouches Fantastiques, a show about a gay magazine published from 1918 to 1920 in Montreal.
Over the weekend, the festival said that posters were hit with stickers of bible quotes denouncing homosexuality and purporting women’s inferiority to men.
Deirdre Pike of the Social Planning and Research Council says this was a deliberate and premeditated act “by someone who has access to a printer and who is doing this as a tactic of activism.”
LISTEN: Deirdre Pike joins the Bill Kelly Show with Ted Michaels
She says this is an opportunity to take a stand and have important conversations to help create positive change, adding that “we don’t interrupt homophobia” enough.
Pike says this kind of act is a reminder that some LGBTQ adults and teens stay in hiding, and “some people are not understanding enough of the impact these kinds of acts have on the community, and the fear it creates.”
The Fringe Festival is hoping anyone with information about the incidents will contact police.
With files from the Canadian Press
Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct the name and description of one of the plays, Les Mouches Fantastiques.
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