WATCH: Promo for Gun Event Uses Rainbow Flag as Target

A Facebook image that seemed to cast LGBT people -- or at least the Pride flag -- as a target for shooting has stirred outrage against the organizers of an Oklahoma biathlon that combines shooting and running.

The image, now removed, was posted on Facebook to promote the Oklahoma Run 'n Gun event, set for July 18 in Pawnee, reports Oklahoma City TV station KFOR. It pictured two men with rifles flanking a rainbow flag and was captioned "new high visibility targets on the 500 yard range."

Run 'n Gun organizers said they meant the post as a joke and that they'd received complaints about targets being hard to see, but LGBT Oklahomans were not amused. "People got really offended and really upset, and people were really feeling threatened," Freedom Oklahoma executive director Troy Stevenson told KFOR.

Another LGBT activist, Scott J. Hamilton, told the station, "I think for many gay men and women in the state of Oklahoma, we feel as if we walk around as targets."

Stevenson said he contacted an event organizer about the post. "He assures us that it wasn't meant as a threat," Stevenson said in the KFOR report. "It was a situation where I don't think the people doing it understood social media or how bad their joke was."

Watch the report below.