News

click to enlarge

• Submitted
• A reader removing a threatening anti-LGBTQ+ sticker from a sign at the Arcata Marsh.

One sticker, using a homophobic slur, suggests queer people should “report to the rope,” an allusion to hanging. Another sticker depicts two adult figures shielding young figures from a rainbow, reflecting the common anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric that children should not be exposed to LGBTQ+ people or topics. Yet another sticker included an anti-Semitic message about pedophilia. The reader, who is queer themselves, feels the threat of violence against queer people should be taken seriously. They recounted times they had been called slurs on the Arcata Plaza and had glass thrown at them.

“To know there's folks around me that see me and my partner holding hands, and it makes them think I belong at the end of a hanged rope. It makes me feel unsafe, and for all the kids on the queer continuum coming to age, just trying to exist, and they're being met with prejudice. Same with other minoritized groups.”

The stickers are similar in phrasing and appearance to the ones vandals placed in a McKinleyville park in October of 2022. The stickers used an anti-transgender slur to say that trans people would “get the bat” and depicted a figure beating another with a stick.

Ollie Hancock (they/them) is a staff writer at the Journal. Reach them at (707) 442-1400, extension 317, or [email protected].