Alabama Senior Arrested For Threats Regarding Pride Flag At Hair Salon

James Willoughby Wood (mug shot)

An 83-year-old man in Alabama has been arrested and charged after leaving a threatening note on the door of a hair salon flying a rainbow flag.

AL.com reports that police identified James Willoughby Wood using surveillance footage which showed the senior leaving a note at the salon.

“This is not San Francisco or downtown Birmingham,” read the note in all caps. “This is Homewood which is a religious and family city. We suggest that you remove that flag before it is too late. We are concerned citizens. Good Bye.”

Before it is too late...

The owner of the salon, Issam Bajalia, found the note after returning from attending World Pride in New York City.

“We’re just very disappointed because our only crime (according to) this person is we have a rainbow flag in front of our building,” Bajalia told AL.com. “My thing is what is so offensive about a rainbow or a flag and how does this disrupt your religious journey?”

Due to the threatening nature of the note, an employee reported the message to the police.

Wood was picked out of a lineup and charged with misdemeanor harassment. His bond was set at $300.

Nashville Gay Bars Receive Ominous Hate Mail With Images Of Donald Trump & An Assault Rifle

(screen capture via NewsChannel 5)

NewsChannel 5 in Nashville, Tennessee, reports that a disturbing flyer with an image of a gun has been sent to at least several gay bars in the city.

Melvin Brown, owner of the bar Stirrup, told the local news channel he received the flyer in his mail last Thursday.

The flyer depicts the letters “LGBT” but instead of representing ‘lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender,’ above each letter are images of the Statue of Liberty, a gun, a beer bottle and Donald Trump.

On the back of the flyer was a stamp of the word MAGA, the common Trump campaign slogan ‘Make America Great Again,’ and a return address that led reporters to a vacant lot in downtown Nashville.

"When you put a picture of an assault riffle on there, which was used in the Pulse shooting, and you mail it to every LGBT bar in Nashville - that is coming from a hateful place,” said Brown. “To say that it's disturbing is an understatement.”

The flyer, which some are calling ’targeted hate mail,’ didn’t mention or appear to be associated with any particular political campaign, but Brown says he believes it was inspired by the midterm elections.

“The midterms are right around the corner and I think somebody is trying to incite a reaction,” Brown added.

At least four gay bars in the Nashville area have reported receiving the flyer.

Watch the report from NewsChannel 5 below.

Ted Cruz: Donald Trump Threatened My Wife

Appearing on CNN's "New Day," GOP White House hopeful Sen. Ted Cruz slapped back at Donald Trump for threatening Cruz's wife via Twitter after a Cruz Super-PAC used a nearly naked photo of Melania Trump in a Facebook ad.

From Politico:

“If Donald wants to get in a character fight he's better off sticking with me, because Heidi is way out of his league,” Cruz said on CNN’s “New Day,” responding to a late-night tweet from Trump warning, "Be careful, Lyin' Ted, or I will spill the beans on your wife!”

The attack reveals a lot about Trump's character, Cruz said. "That should be beneath Donald," he said. "The reason he's doing that is because he had a very bad night last night. He got clobbered in Utah."

Trump’s tweet — which began with “Lyin' Ted Cruz just used a picture of Melania from a G.Q. shoot in his ad" — is an apparent reference to an online ad by anti-Trump super PAC Make America Awesome, which used a photo of Trump’s wife Melania posing nude in British GQ in 2000 in an attempt to sway conservative Mormon voters.

Cruz responded via Twitter shortly after: "Pic of your wife not from us. Donald, if you try to attack Heidi, you're more of a coward than I thought. #classless.”

"The tweet he was unhappy about was not even a super PAC supporting me. It is an independent group. I don’t know them,” Cruz said. "When Donald gets scared, when he gets angry, when he gets threatened ... So last night Donald threatened my wife, he went directly after my wife."

Oklahoma Run 'N Gun Event Features Rainbow Flag As Shooting Target

An Oklahoma group organizing a biathlon event called Oklahoma Run 'n Gun, which combines running and shooting. raised eyebrows when they featured a rainbow flag as a shooting target in a recent Facebook post.

From Oklahoma City's NBC affiliate:

The post angered many people who took it as a direct threat to the LGBT community.

Event organizers say they did not expect the response they got and that it was all meant as a joke.

“People got really offended and really upset and people were really feeling threatened,” said Freedom Oklahoma Executive Director Troy Stevenson.

The picture shows two men with rifles standing beside a rainbow flag and the caption reads “new high visibility targets on the 500 yard range.”

“People took it as a threat, people felt very threatened,” said Stevenson.

“Since it said our new target and it had guns that I took it as a threat,” said human rights activist, Mahkesha Hogg.

“I think for many gay men and women in the state of Oklahoma, we feel as if we walk around as targets,” said Scott J. Hamilton, an advocate for the LGBT community.

Stevenson says he reached out to event organizers after seeing the picture.

“He assures us that it wasn’t meant as a threat. It was a situation where I don’t think the people doing it understood social media or how bad their joke was,” said Stevenson.

The race organizer tells NewsChannel 4 some people had been complaining about not being able to see the targets, so this was their response… a brightly colored one.

He says it was meant to be funny.

The event organizer tells us they are a fitness and liberty minded group, not a hate group.

Making the symbol of LGBT Pride your target to shoot at? Gee, I can't imagine why gay folks would feel threatened.

You'll all recall when former half-term governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, promoted "targeting" Democratic lawmakers during an election cycle and soon after Arizona Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was shot by a gun nut.

Words and images matter people.