Gallery: 9 Anti-Gay Billboards from across the U.S.
By Randy Shulman
on
May 10, 2015
Organizers of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival were outraged after a billboard advertising free STD testing was erected along the freeway in Indio, California, just 15 minutes from the concert site.
"Catch more than vibes?" the billboard reads.
Beneath the words is a bubble advertising the website freestdcheck.org and a photo of the Empire Polo Club, site of Coachella festival, which takes place annually over two separate weekends, with the first three days of musical acts starting on April 12. The festival is expected to draw about 125,000 revelers.
Anti-LGBTQ trolls have blamed openly gay Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg for a bridge collapse in Baltimore believed to have killed six people after it was hit by a 95,000-ton cargo ship.
The Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed after the Dali, a 985-foot container ship flying the Singapore flag, crashed into the bridge's reinforced concrete support pier.
The container ship, which was traveling at about 9 miles per hour, lost both engine power and electrical power to its control and communications systems minutes before it crashed into the bridge stanchion.
Police in West Hollywood are searching for a man who assaulted another while man yelling anti-gay slurs. He is also believed to have assaulted other individuals in the area.
The victim of the anti-gay assault, David Velasquez, told the WeHo Times that, on Sunday, March 17, he was coming back from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, where he had been treated earlier in the day for severe cold and flu symptoms.
He stopped by the Pavilions in WeHo to pick up medication and was riding his personal scooter home when the altercation occurred.
Velasquez noted that he was riding on the sidewalk to avoid being hit by potentially drunk drivers as he made his way through West Hollywood on a particularly raucous St. Patrick’s Day.