8:45am Reporting by Greggory Moore | On August 3 in the Willmore District, a house flying a gay flag was egged. Later that day, just two blocks from the house in question, a gay couple out walking their dog was aggressively confronted.

Whether the egging was a targeted act against gay individuals is an open question. But there is no such question regarding the confrontation that occurred three hours later.

Lee Kochems says he and his partner were crossing the street at 7th Street and Chestnut Ave. at 6:15 p.m. when a man driving a large, black pickup truck began yelling at them.”

In the middle of the intersection he stopped,” Kochems relates. “We couldn’t quite understand everything he said at first — he had a heavy accent —but then he yelled, ‘You fucking faggots! Disgusting! You’re all going to get AIDS! Hope you die! You’re all going to go to hell!’ We felt threatened, because we’re in the street and he’s in this big truck, hanging out the window screaming at the top of his lungs. … And then he tore off down the street.” 

Kochems approached Councilmember Robert Garcia (in whose First District the Willmore neighborhood is located) at the end of Thursday’s Unity Gathering held in response to three assaults against gay men that took place along the Broadway corridor over the past two weeks. Kochems says he can identify the individual, with the prompting of Garcia, says he will be making a police report.

“If you look at the statistics, Long Beach is a safer city than it has been in 30 years,” Garcia says, “[but] when you hear of these incidents, it makes you wonder how many [such] incidents aren’t being reported. … Any hate incident anywhere in the city should be reported.”

Larry Jones, who has lived in Long Beach for two years, feels the occurrence of such incidents is on the rise. “This is something we live with every day of our lives,” he says of people driving by yelling, “Faggot!”

He also reports that the building he manages in the Willmore District, in which many gay individuals are known to reside, has been the target of anti-gay graffiti. “My whole purpose for moving to Long Beach was to get away from this type of attitude,” Jones says. “And now, to be honest, I’m thinking about leaving.”

Kochems concurs with Jones’s perception that such incidents are occuring with increased frequency.

Of the Willmore District, Garcia says, “No question that that is a great and welcoming neighborhood” and laments that “a few bad apples may be trying to spoil it.”

Garcia speculates that if hate incidents are on the rise, it may be “push-back” by those opposing gay equality in response to developments such as New York recent move to recognize same-sex marriage.

“Sometimes when a group that has been marginalized in the past begins to become accepted into the American family there is resistance from certain types of people who don’t believe [that group should be accepted],” Garcia said Thursday. “Oftentimes when you see those groups succeeding and breaking barriers, there are people who are going to be angered by that.”

An example of such sentiment was posted in response to my coverage of Thursday’s Unity Gathering, where a poster calling him-/herself “Triedofit” labels Jorge Ibarrias, the suspect arrested and charged with battery with a hate-crime enhancement for an July 25 attack on Martin Sanchez, “a hero and a martyr.”

“[U]nfortunately, when normal human beings are pushed so far … they will become tired of it and begin to defend themselves,” writes the poster, who continues:

Homosexuality is in all ways a perversion of nature, so the community — by right of natural law — belongs to the normal people in this world. We’re sick of the gay community — and we’re tired of your attacks ([e.g., the] Prop 8 reversal). No, it’s time to defend ourselves from this loss of what is right according to nature. These are ‘assaults against all of us’, and you’ve pushed us up against the wall. I don’t want to condone violence, but this backward thinking has become a disease and it needs to stop for the sake of our children and future.”

Click here for our policies on covering the Long Beach city council.