Blueberries were splattered across the front entrance of Partners in Oklahoma City – Photo: KFOR.
The owners of a gay club in Oklahoma say their establishment has been targeted by acts of vandalism using food as a weapon on two separate occasions.
The first incident occurred last Tuesday, when staff at Partners, a gay bar in Oklahoma City, found a car in the parking lot that had been vandalized by having soup poured over it.
The following day, someone scattered blueberries on the walkway in front of the bar’s main entrance, with some of the berries creating a splatter pattern on the door and the doorframe.
“It was everywhere,” John McAffrey, the owner of Partners, told Oklahoma City-based NBC affiliate KFOR in an interview. “We first thought somebody got sick and then once we got closer, we realized that it was, it looks like blueberries.”
McAffrey said surveillance video caught the culprit in action, but he and his business partner don’t want to share the video until they speak with an attorney. He says the vandal was driving an early 2000s Chevy Silverado.
“They pull up, throw it out the window, slow down for probably like 10 seconds,” he said.
Soup was poured on a car in the parking lot of Partners, a gay bar in Oklahoma City – Photo: KFOR.
It remains unclear as to why the bar was targeted. McAffrey says it could be a form of protest related to COVID-19 restrictions and a local mandate that bars close at 11 p.m., but they have no evidence to confirm that suspicion just yet.
Partners has since placed a security guard in the parking lot to keep an eye out for trouble and prevent future incidents.
“It was completely childish,” McAffrey told KFOR. “There’s better ways to handle something if it is targeted at a certain individual but it’s not going to stop us for continuing and having somewhere safe for everyone in the community to come to.”
The Human Rights Campaign, the nation's largest LGBTQ advocacy organization, has stopped accepting financial support from two defense contractors, Northrop Grumman and RTX (formerly known as Raytheon).
The change, first reported by the progressive publication The Intercept, comes amid a two-year pressure campaign from far-left and pro-Palestinian organizations who alleged that the companies were profiting off of Israel's military campaign in Gaza by supplying arms and other military technology to the Israeli military.
In a statement to Metro Weekly, HRC said that it is not currently sponsored by Northrop Grumman or RTX, but did not directly respond to an inquiry asking specifically about how those relationships ended.
An interracial gay couple who run an award-winning farm in King George County, Virginia, say they were the targets of a hate-filled act after someone deliberately dumped medical waste on their property following last week’s state elections.
Kevin Graham, 44, and Dragan Kurbalija, 47, own Gardening Gays Farm, a 27-acre property along U.S. Route 301 where they sell flowers, eggs, seasonal produce, and pasture-raised meats, including lamb and chicken.
They also sell jams, sauces, teas, herbal remedies, local honey, handcrafted candles, and other artisan goods at their on-site store, and share their experiences as farmers on YouTube. The business was recently voted King George County’s “Overall Best Business,” “Best Family-Owned Business,” and “Best Agricultural Business” in a county-sponsored “Best of the Best” contest.
The "Biggest Little Rainbow Bridge," created by Local Girl Scout Troop 508 in Reno, Nevada, as a memorial for deceased pets, sits in Crissie Caughlin Park. It is intended as a "beautiful and peaceful place" where visitors can "mourn the loss of our beloved four-legged family members who have crossed the rainbow bridge into the great beyond and reflect on the memories we have made with them."
But two weeks after the rainbow paint was applied -- and just as the troop was preparing to add the final touches -- an unknown vandal poured white paint over the bridge. The act sparked speculation, reports Reno-based ABC affiliate KOLO-TV, that the bridge was targeted by someone who may have wrongly assumed it honored the LGBTQ community.
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