Erin Davies decked out her VW Beetle in rainbow colors (and adorably nicknamed it the “FagBug”) after a 2007 vandalism incident left her car adorned with motivating scripture like “fag” and the always creative “U R gay,” thanks to the rainbow bumper sticker. And now the car has been hit again: a spelling-challenged nuisance at SUNY Plattsburgh, where she was giving one of her many college presentations, etched “Faggets + Dikes Need to Die” into the driver’s window. Well, heteros and breeders need to retake fourth grade.
Francis
This is simply an act of terror, but in this case, it’s the bigots who are in fear and trying to create fear in others. They can’t stand people who are out loud and proud. The way they are so threatened by LGBT folks is ridiculous. Incidents like these only make us stronger.
NateB79
Why are people always against water retention. Dikes have a place in this world too, ask the Dutch.
Snownova
@NateB79:
hehe, this reminds me of how I always made my American friends giggle when I described how much of the Netherlands were kept safe by miles and miles of dikes…
samthor
47 months is pretty good actually.
much better time between attacks than what happens to some of my friends.
Jim Hlavac
Weirdly, the local gay bar in my town is owned by the Dykes family, with the lesbian niece as manager. A dyke named Dykes is somehow apropos, and a source of constant humor. Stranger, my name means “I eat big head” in Czech; go figure. My mom could never live that down 🙂 Weird puns of the gay life bring smiles to our minds.
Meanwhile, what are the police doing about this sort of stuff? It’s beyond the Westboro ruling’s free speech protections. Isn’t it?
DJ
“Faggets” lmao. Ahhh… That just shows how ignorant these kids were.
Ken S
I might have a suggestion for how to discourage homophobic vandalism, however slightly. My car has a rainbow ‘ribbon’ magnet on it that says “Support our Families” and it’s been there for.. geez.. at least a year now, I think, I’ve lost track, but no one’s ever fucked with my car over it. And this isn’t exactly a progressive gay mecca town. But that magnet isn’t alone- it’s sort of ‘interwoven’ with a “Support our Troops” magnet, near a sticker of the flag.
It wasn’t purely some strategic ploy, mind you; I’m a military brat and one of my best friends is in the army, so the troops one is also sincere- I actually owned that one first. But I waited until I had the rainbow one before I put both of them on. My reasoning was that I didn’t want to be pigeonholed into the “right-wing war-for-oil-supporting jingoist” stereotype *or* the “bleeding-heart pacifist lefty faggot” stereotype- they’re both misappropriations. I wanted anyone who saw those personalizations of my vehicle to realize that the two aren’t mutually contradictory; that conservative chauvinists couldn’t fuck with the ‘fag’ car without also fucking with someone who’s patriotic and cares about the military (like self-described conservatives often see themselves), and that activist liberals couldn’t deride me as just another simple-minded neocon jingoist without also deriding an advocate for queer social justice. Neither ideological ‘side’ of the spectrum owns me exclusively, so neither can attack me without attacking something in themselves too.
Maybe I’m actually being hated twice as much, I don’t know. But no one’s keyed “fag” or a peace sign into my paint, or deflated my tires, or even tampered with my magnets. I like to think that maybe it’s because it’s easier to mess with a totally anonymous stranger than with someone you know, and the more you know about someone as a whole, multi-faceted, relatable person the harder it gets.
McMike
me think it funny they not know how to spell
Nick
the sad part is, it’s was probably done by some freaked out gay kid. Thinking, hoping, wishing if he just does this one act, he won’t have those feelings any more. Been there, glad I’m over it. A lot of us adults forget how hard it is to be different.
LookingAround
McMike : True. Which makes me suspect the culprit is actually Queerty.
Luis
So some whatever grader has been dared by his or her friends and they have of course picked the one who will later come out as gay and go on some TV show to say ‘it was me, I vandalised the FagBug!’
This is a fledgling gay. Look at the flurry of panache on that signoff line below the wording. It’s someone who doesn’t yet know he’s gay, but soon will. 🙂