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19th June 2023
12:56pm BST
Laurence Fox has been met with a reaction of both mocking and fury after he posted a video of himself attempting to burn Pride flags.
The former actor clearly didn't spend much - if any - time with his kids on Father's Day, instead spending his Sunday by setting fire to what he labelled "child mutilation bunting" in a disgusting act.
In the video, the 45-year-old doused the Pride flags - which he said he had been gifted by a friend - in lighter fluid, before trying to set them alight one by one whilst saying "goodbye."
Many of the flags quickly went out after being lit.
The 45-year-old's actions have prompted a fierce backlash of both anger and mockery from people.
One person wrote: "You know, most people just see their kids on Father's Day."
Another labelled him a "sad man."
And a third mocked him for being "scared of a flag."
Meanwhile, quizzer and The Chase star Paul Sinha, who is himself gay, called out Fox and those who had "enabled him."
He wrote: "As Laurence Fox films himself burning Pride flags, I remind myself of my friends who think he's interesting, colleagues who have happily worked with him, mainstream media outlets who have enabled him, and the sheer vapidity of the 'well he's entitled to an opinion' brigade."
And comedian Dane Baptiste tweeted: "Laurence Fox is burning a pride flag to make a statement. And that statement is: 'My children are not with me, they’re at a drag queen story reading, by choice, and this is all I have left'.
"He could taken a picture of his cishet kids, declaring his love for them, but nah."
Fox shares two kids with his ex-wife Billie Piper.
The Pride flag is a long-standing symbol of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities and celebrates LGBT social movements.
It is designed to reflect and represent the diversity of the LGBT community and the entire spectrum of human sexuality and gender.
This is not the first time Fox has attacked the pride symbol.
He received a temporary ban from Twitter in June last year after he made a swastika out of four Pride flags, and then made this his profile picture.
This violated the platform's rules regarding abusive profile information and rules against posting hateful imagery.
Fox put together the vile image just days after a two people were killed by a gunman during the Oslo Pride festival.
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