A well-known gay friendly church in
Charlotte, North Carolina was vandalized with a homophobic message.
Wedgewood Church's front doors, which
are painted in rainbow colors, were spray painted with the phrase
“Fags are Pedofhiles [sic].”
The incident occurred just hours after
the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board on Tuesday voted to expand its
multiculturalism policy to include sexual orientation and gender
identity, The
Charlotte Observer reported. Anti-LGBT activist Flip Benham
was reportedly escorted out of the meeting.
Chris Ayers, co-pastor of the church,
said that the church “enthusiastically” supported the school
board's decision.
“It could be related to the school
board meeting, but it's hard to tell since it's the seventh time
we've been vandalized,” Ayers said. “We've seen this happen a
lot more over the past two years.”
After an incident of vandalism in 2015,
the church decided to paint its doors in rainbow colors, a move that
attracted national attention.
A
GoFundMe page set up to raise money to help the church buy paint
and install a new security system surpassed its goal of $5,000 within
24 hours.