Prop 8 Hate Crime for Christmas?

The Trolley of Lights is a Santa Barbara tradition. Tickets for adults are $20 and for children under 12 are $12. The trolleys have a designated route through particular residential streets where people decorate their houses for Christmas.

This year, a gay couple whose house is prominent on the Trolley of Lights route because they go "overboard" (self described) on the decorations also left up their "No on Prop 8" sign to be viewed by all those paying to take their children on the tour. The Trolley of Lights tours started on December 8th and on December 12th, the gay couple awoke to find the word "fag" written on their front window. Outside they discovered that this had also been written on their driveway three times.

The homeowners called the police and want this vandalism investigated as a hate crime. The gay couple have two young children, seven and eight years old. In this photograph from the Santa Barbara Independent by Paul Wellman, you can see the two men with their children positioned to stand on each side of the three driveway tiles where the word "fag" had been written.


They had not removed the graffiti at the time of the photo because they were still waiting for the police to photograph the tiles. As well as getting this publicity in the newspaper, one member of the couple, Andrew Knox, has an idea how to use this for more promotion against Prop 8:

Knox said a new sign would be erected in front of his house — one reading “No H8 Graffiti” — and that he would be seeing if other homes in his neighborhood would consider posting similar ones in their yards.

The Trolley of Lights tour ends on the 26th, so if he can get the new sign up fast, he can get a lot of publicity for this efforts. The article on this is in the Santa Barbara Independent here.