







By John Wright

A Metro rider says he spotted an anti-gay flier affixed to a bus shelter at Westheimer and Stanford in Montrose on Sunday night.

The 54-year-old man, who asked to remain anonymous, snapped a photo of the flier and sent it to OutSmart. The flier, shown above and below, says “Follow Your Fellow Faggots” in large letters above statistics about suicide rates in the LGBT community, as well as a drawing of a person hanging from a noose with a rainbow-colored heart on his chest. At the bottom is a logo and the words “Fascist Solutions.”

The man said he was waiting to board the 82 Metro bus to his home in Southwest Houston after a night at the bars in Montrose when he noticed the flier. He said it was one of two offensive fliers on the bus shelter on the north side of Westheimer, describing the other as “an appeal to racial purity.”

“Needless to say, it was a little unsettling,” said the man, who’s African-American. He added that he didn’t tear down the fliers because he was worried someone might be watching.

“I was scared and very rattled, especially with all the other things going on in the country right now,” he said. “These fliers could be the beginning of something else.”

The man said he didn’t report the flier to anyone until contacting OutSmart on Wednesday afternoon. By that time, the flier was gone from the bus shelter.

“I’ve just been kind of keeping it inside, but it’s bothering me, and I feel like people need to know,” the man said.

Laura Whitley, a spokeswoman for Metro, encouraged people to contact the agency’s customer care center at 713-635-4000.

“Bottom line, if there is something offensive like that, we just need to know about it,” Whitley said, adding that she would forward a photo of the flier to Metro’s facilities and police departments.

After KPRC-TV picked up OutSmart’s story about the flier, the Montrose Management District issued a statement Friday, April 28 saying it was “shocked and dismayed by recent discoveries of anti-LGBT materials posted around Montrose.” The district encouraged people to report any incident of hate speech to the Houston Police Department by calling 713-884-3131.

“The District is working closely with law enforcement officers to uncover those responsible for defacing public property and deliberately attempting to antagonize members of our community,” the district said. “We will use every available legal remedy to hold perpetrators responsible and discourage future acts.”