Jason Sandford
Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.
Here’s the opening post on a thread at Reddit Asheville that’s been getting a lot of comment. It details an alleged attack on a gay couple walking through downtown Asheville on Sept. 22:
So I posted this on r/gay but was told to post it here. My friend and his partner took a long weekend in Asheville last weekend. They stayed in an upscale hotel and walked to dinner and then a bar. On their way back to the hotel, a car started creeping up behind them. The two girls in the front seat started yelling obscenities at them-f*cking faggot, dirty fags, etc. they initially ignored them. The girls then pulled the car over and the taunting got worse. Friend #1 told them to move on and mind their own business. At that point a guy jumped out of the back seat and started punching friend #1 in the chest. Friend #2-the partner-defended #1 and got hit so hard in the face that he fell to the ground. The guy jumped into the car and they trio sped off. My friends-the couple-contacted the police but they didn’t get much of a result. So here is friend #2’s picture after the attack. It happened on 9/22. Last night on 9/29 friend #2 still had a black eye. Upon advise I received elsewhere, they have contacted the local news in Asheville and are getting a story together.
Commenters are all over the board in response, but one intriguing question keeps popping up: is Asheville as gay-friendly as it claims to be?
I’m looking for a police report, so if anyone has more detail about what street this happened on, what time, or names of victims, that would be helpful in tracking it down.
Image link for gay couple.
I’m a devout Christian who’s fed up with the hatred
that is directed at the LGBT community by some hateful people who seem to think they have the right to commit
crimes against the LGBT community.
Love the sinner. Hate the sin.
Yep, Paris of the SOUTH. Stay classy Asheville.
“Yep, Paris of the SOUTH. Stay classy Asheville.”
You say that as though there haven’t been gay-bashings this year in New York, DC, and Los Angeles, among others. Unfortunately this kind of garbage happens everywhere.
No, my point was that we are still in North Carolina, which is considered the South, and we do have quite a lot of ignorant backwards ultra conservative homophobes in this area and this so called ‘hate crime’ is nothing new.
Yes Asheville is extremely gay-friendly (hoooray!). But you have ignorant people from the outskirts of town—or out of town–who choose to participate in hate crimes…Karma is a bitch
When did those two girls (a couple I think) get beat up trying to help someone down on Biltmore Avenue across from the Peel … what happened with that?