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CUCC publishes a monthly Newsletter. If you would like to receive the email version of our newsletter, please email office.bvcucc@gmail.com or call us at (719) 395-2544.
The rainbow banner, which was hung on the exterior wall of the church, has been up since 2012.
A few vinyl threads from the banner remain, as do some of the screws used to affix the banner. Poos estimates the banner was ripped down sometime between Sunday, Feb. 23, and Monday, Feb. 24.
The rainbow banner, which was hung on the exterior wall of the church, has been up since 2012.
A large rainbow banner was pulled off of the Congregational United Church of Christ’s wall sometime between Feb. 23 and 24. The banner, which read “God is still speaking,” had been hanging for nearly 13 years.
Rev. Rebecca Kemper Poos noticed the banner was missing around 4 p.m. Feb. 24, but another church member had noted the missing banner earlier around 1 p.m.
“We are almost positive it wasn’t missing until Sunday night because we look at it all the time,” she said. “A bunch of us were at church on Sunday, coming and going. … We would have noticed, so we’re almost positive it was after dark on Sunday night, the 23rd.”
Poos reached out to local law enforcement, including the Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office and the Buena Vista Police Department.
BVPD Chief Dean Morgan said, “Unfortunately, there’s not much in the way of leads, because there were no witnesses and no cameras. But we did take a desk report.”
The church, located at 217 Crossman Ave. in Buena Vista, is a popular meeting spot for many groups, including the local Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG) group and the BV Pride Coalition. Earlier that day, CUCC had hosted an incident training with Sergeant Jesse Cortese of the Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office and Salida Police Officer Dakota DeFurio. The church had been concerned about attacks as they frequently host the LGBTQ+ community.
“(Someone in the church leadership) had said that an hour before we saw that (the flag was missing),” Poos said. “It was just a whole bunch of emotions. … I knew we needed to report it to the local police, and I told the sheriff, as well.”
Poos sees a “definite link” between this incident and online comments in response to the December 2024 LGBTQ+ teen event hosted at the Buena Viking. Hateful comments online were reported to the BVPD, who sent four officers to the event.
“There was a BVPD officer (Hoffman) who came later in the afternoon and met with Clarke (Poos’ husband),” she said, “who was one of the same officers that had been there with Chief Dean Morgan at the Viking that night.”
She also gave her kudos to the police, who she said have been “very responsive;” she has been encouraging them to “look at this (incident) as more than just random. … It’s so obvious this was very targeted.”
As he did in December, Chief Morgan said the community should be cognizant that crime does happen in the community, covering a broad scope of issues beyond just vandalism and this possibly bias-motivated incident.
“Over the past few weeks, we’ve had lots of different types of crime in Buena Vista, some of it a lot more serious,” he said. “For us as police, we keep it on our radar when we start seeing things against a specific group.”
While Morgan doesn’t recall any specific incidents targeting the LGBTQ+ community in 2023, in 2024 they had three incidents, including the vandalization of a different flag and reports of the anti-LGBTQ+ Facebook comments in response to the teen event.
“We are a smaller department, so we have lots of different entities we meet with,” Morgan said. “Sometimes there are concerns about events. Sometimes town council meetings and things like that, people will get heated about topics and they ask for an officer to be present. We tell people that if you know beforehand there’s going to be some issues, let us know and we’ll try to have an officer there.
“It seems this church was targeted because somebody apparently didn’t like some type of messaging,” he said. “When there are events there, usually we try to patrol through the area. If they know something specific, then it’s definitely more on our radar where we can give it more attention.”
He also encouraged anyone with information about the banner incident to contact the BVPD.
“We’d love to have a chat with them,” he said. “It could be considered a bias-motivated crime, but at this point, without a suspect, we don’t know the motive. So we would definitely like to chat with this person.”
The banner has been up since 2012, Poos said, if not longer. There are still screws and grommets attached to the building, and there are threads of vinyl left where the sign once lived. Another banner on the same exterior wall has been hanging just as long.
“I know several churches (where) … it’s a regular occurrence for them to get their banner trashed,” she said. “It’s a really common thing to attack rainbow banners and give churches a hard time who are supportive.
“I think now, because of the political climate in our country, is that permission seems to have been given to attack vulnerable communities,” Poos said. “We also see that as a call to stand up even stronger and louder at this time, to protect and embrace vulnerable communities.”
Poos said the police checked for ladder prints but found none and that it may have been “kids standing on each other’s shoulders.
“That’s effort and planning. We don’t have any security cameras or lights on that end of the building,” she said. “I don’t think the post office has them on that side, either.”
Other neighboring residents and businesses said they would check their cameras, too.
While the banner has never been attacked before, the signs on their fence have. The Pooses have also had the “Hate Has No Home” and “Black Lives Matter” signs in their yard destroyed or removed.
“We had our ‘Hate Has No Home Here’ sign vandalized and destroyed over the past couple of years,” she said. “We’d got out and it was upside down. Clarke (Poos) would bolt it to a board and fix it. We just kept going through this, three or four times over the course of a few months. … Finally, Clarke went and the sign was totally gone. He took the same board and spray-painted ‘Love Still Wins’ in red.”
A few months ago, another community member added a chainlink heart around the sign. The BV Pride Coalition’s teen group that met for Random Acts of Kindness week added flowers and a few quotes to the heart, including “What the world needs now is love,” from the 1965 song of the same name.
“That heart was like, ‘We’re still here,’” she said. “If somebody takes our sign, we’ll just make a different spot. … This isn’t the first time that we’ve had some kind of pushback or targeted thing.”
CUCC pursued and obtained their Open and Affirming (ONA) designation in the spring of 2024, but the stance has been “a part of CUCC’s DNA for decades,” Poos said. “We’ve always been very welcoming and we’re being more vocal about it in these past years and done more education, taken more official steps. But it’s always been part of our character and who we are.”
CUCC, Poos said, will also “continue to protect everyone who wants to use our buildings.” They plan to order and hang a new banner on the south side of the building above the door, where there is a camera.
“To the Pride community,” Poos said in a Feb. 24 communication to the LGBTQ+ user groups, “I am so very sorry this has happened and we want to do everything we can to help everyone feel safe at CUCC. We stated in the report with the BVPD that we see this as totally linked to the speech and the event at the [Buena] Viking and hope they will treat it not just as vandalism that is very concerning, targeted mischief and abuse.”
In her comments, Poos emphasized one thing above all: “We won’t be intimidated.
“We don’t take this lightly. We’re still here and strong and wanting to protect their welcome,” she said. “We do see it as very much tied to this bigger effort in the community. … We won’t let these concerning events ward us from our mission. We’re taking measures to increase our security and want to reassure everyone that they are still safe and welcome here.”
“We’re working with the police,” she added, “and we’d like to thank the BVPD and county sheriff for their quick response and support.”
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