At least three LGBT+ community centres in the United States have been targeted by vandals in the past two weeks, according to the Washington Blade.
Last week, the Jersey Shore office of LGBT+ rights group Garden State Equality had its front door smashed—where a rainbow flag was draped.
On March 7, The Equality Centre in Tulsa Oklahoma dealt with two separate attacks within 24 hours.
According to executive director Toby Jenkins, someone in a truck drove by at 12:30am firing more than a dozen shots at the centre’s windows.
The following day, a man personally came into the centre and began spouting homophobic slurs at staff, saying he wished they were dead.
“We’re getting reports like this from all over the country,” Jenkins told Tulsa World.
“Gay community centers being vandalized; welcoming churches being vandalized; gay businesses being vandalized. Now it’s happened in Tulsa.”
In late February at the offices of Equality Florida in Orlando, a window bearing the organisation’s logo—an equal sign—was smashed by vandals.
Daniel Pinello, a political scientist at the City University of New York says that attacks on LGBT+ centres— as well as on mosques and synagogues— were “no surprise” and that progressive demonstrations such as the women’s march “provoke their own backlash on the right.”
“As a result, mosques and synagogues and LGBT centers provide ready targets for whatever rage flares up among ultra-conservatives,” Pinello said.
“Their retaliation is particularly rife when the opportunity for significant policy changes by the new administration seems on the verge of being squandered because of too many daily hiccups by Donald Trump and the White House.
"In truth, I wouldn’t be surprised if these homophobic and anti-Semitic and Islamophobic attacks continue at a brisk pace as the Indivisible and related movements openly progress in response to the current regime.”
