Gay bars in Nashville are receiving red, white and blue pro-Trump flyers in the mail that they equate with hate mail.
Mailings with the Statue of Liberty, a rifle (representing all guns), beer and President Trump have gay bar owners worried that they have been targeted with something more nefarious than a sly play on the LGBT acronym (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender).
Melvin Brown, owner of Stirrup, recently spoke to a local CBS affiliate to discuss the flyers, which have been sent to at least three other bar owners.
“When you put a picture of an assault rifle on there which was used in the Pulse shooting and you mail it to every LGBT bar in Nashville, that is coming from a hateful place,” Mr. Brown said. “To say that it’s disturbing is an understatement.”
The owner’s remark is a reference to the 2016 mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, by Omar Mateen, who killed 49 people before dying in a shootout with police.
Firearm ownership within the LGBT community spiked followed the massacre, along with increased membership in the LGBT-friendly group Pink Pistols in Denver.
“This has a very aggressive tone about [the mailings],” Chris Sanders, executive director of the Tennessee Equality Project, told NBC News on Monday. “It doesn’t use many words, but it uses a lot of images I think are meant to threaten us. The community’s message back is, ’Yes this is frightening, but we’re going to turn out and vote regardless.’”
The return address on the mailings traces back to a construction site.
• Douglas Ernst can be reached at dernst@washingtontimes.com.
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