Blueberries were splattered across the front entrance of Partners in Oklahoma City – Photo: KFOR.
The owners of a gay club in Oklahoma say their establishment has been targeted by acts of vandalism using food as a weapon on two separate occasions.
The first incident occurred last Tuesday, when staff at Partners, a gay bar in Oklahoma City, found a car in the parking lot that had been vandalized by having soup poured over it.
The following day, someone scattered blueberries on the walkway in front of the bar’s main entrance, with some of the berries creating a splatter pattern on the door and the doorframe.
“It was everywhere,” John McAffrey, the owner of Partners, told Oklahoma City-based NBC affiliate KFOR in an interview. “We first thought somebody got sick and then once we got closer, we realized that it was, it looks like blueberries.”
McAffrey said surveillance video caught the culprit in action, but he and his business partner don’t want to share the video until they speak with an attorney. He says the vandal was driving an early 2000s Chevy Silverado.
“They pull up, throw it out the window, slow down for probably like 10 seconds,” he said.
Soup was poured on a car in the parking lot of Partners, a gay bar in Oklahoma City – Photo: KFOR.
It remains unclear as to why the bar was targeted. McAffrey says it could be a form of protest related to COVID-19 restrictions and a local mandate that bars close at 11 p.m., but they have no evidence to confirm that suspicion just yet.
Partners has since placed a security guard in the parking lot to keep an eye out for trouble and prevent future incidents.
“It was completely childish,” McAffrey told KFOR. “There’s better ways to handle something if it is targeted at a certain individual but it’s not going to stop us for continuing and having somewhere safe for everyone in the community to come to.”
Before they ended their recently finished legislative session, Texas lawmakers passed a last-minute ban prohibiting K-12 schools from hosting LGBTQ student clubs.
Senate Bill 12, sponsored by Sen. Brandon Creighton (R-Conroe), was approved after both chambers approved a conference report clarifying that schools are prohibited from authorizing or sponsoring clubs related to sexual orientation or gender identity.
The provision banning LGBTQ student clubs is part of a larger bill banning diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in public schools.
In one of the stranger crime sprees of Pride Month, a masked man on an electric unicycle is reportedly stealing Pride flags across Longmont, Colorado.
Since Memorial Day weekend -- just ahead of Pride Month -- the man has vandalized homes by bending flagpoles and tearing down flags.
Sheryl Colaur, one of the victims, told the Longmont Daily Times-Call that at least 10 -- and possibly as many as 15 -- of her neighbors in Longmont's Harvest Junction Village neighborhood have had their Pride flags stolen, allegedly by the same man.
New research employing mRNA technology -- which gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic -- may offer the key to developing a cure for HIV.
One of the chief challenges in combating HIV is the virus’s ability to hide within certain white blood cells, creating a "reservoir" that can reactivate and evade both the immune system and antiretroviral drugs.
But researchers from the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity in Melbourne, Australia, believe they have found a way to make the virus visible and therefore easier to fight, reports The Guardian.
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