NC gay couple burned out of home

A gay couple in North Carolina lost their home in what authorities deemed a suspicious fire. The men had been harassed and threatened for a year prior to the blaze, reported gay and lesbian news site WGLB on Feb. 6. The couple lived in Clayton, NC, but were away when the Feb. 4 fire was called in at around 1:30 a.m., bringing firefighters to the scene. A neighbor described how the men had been targeted for vandalism and harassment for over a year leading up to the blaze. In one instance, they received hate mail; another time, their tires were slashed. At one point, vandals scrawled an anti-gay epithet on the house with a marker. Neighborhood residents expressed the conviction that the blaze was set deliberately and targeted the men because they are gay. A number of other fires thought to be arson have taken place in the area, but the county sheriff, Steve Bizzell, opined that the blaze that destroyed the couple's home was not related to those fires. Several instances of suspicious fires around the country may be the work of anti-gay arsonists. As previously reported at EDGE, a Georgia man, Chris Staples, reportedly in his early 40s and in ill health, managed to escape the blaze that damaged his home on Jan. 23. Earlier that day, someone had thrown a rock through his window. Wrapped around the rock was a threatening letter containing a string of anti-gay slurs--"[S]ome of the meanest, hateful words that could come out of a person's mouth," as Staples' mother, Wanda Morris, described it.