Hate crimes against Utah LGBTQ nearly doubled last year, with a big jump during Pride Month

When Taylor Nelson first hung an LGBTQ pride flag outside his house in Provo, he said he expected that something would happen to it. It was 2016, Donald Trump had just been elected president and Nelson lived at a house along a main road off the highway into the heart of the Latter-day Saint college town.

Driving by, he said, it’s hard to miss the rainbow banner jutting from a pole on the front porch.

While he worried the flag’s location could make him a target, he also liked that it was conspicuous. He thought of it as a signal to anyone who needed to see it that there was a place for LGBTQ people — a community — in the predominantly conservative town.