This HIV/AIDS group received a homophobic and racist fax from “Mrs. Gas the Gays”
An arts-based AIDS advocacy group has received a horrific homophobic note.
Nelson Santos was working at Visual AIDS when the group received the message through their fax machine.
The message, which was addressed to “Faggot” said “Kill yourself you fucking like fags, I hope you all die a slow painful death”. It was signed off “Mrs. Gas the gays”.
Santos, who is the executive director of Visual AIDS, said that he was completely “thrown” when he received the fax, which he posted on Instagram.
He said to Mic: “I was thrown for a loop. I haven’t gotten a hate fax in an awful long time. No one really send faxes – and particularly a hate fax. It was so odd.”
As well as homophobic slurs, the note used racist and anti-semitic terms.
Santos said that the note made him feel “unsafe” because it reminded him of the hatred that people can have for minorities.
“I wanted to brush it off, but as soon as I walked out the door, I did feel more unsafe than I did before,” Santos said. “It’s always those reminders of that, like, there are people out there that hate you.”
He added that the note came across as a threat, although he does not think they will be directly targeted with anything worse.
“I don’t necessarily think the person who sent this is waiting for me outside, but it does trigger that very uncomfortable idea of, I don’t know, maybe that person is threatening us.”
Although the note has no direct link to a political matter, Santos believes that it was spurred on by the current political state, and that we will inevitably see more attacks like this in the future.
“I think it does open up the floodgates for people to feel more brazen to break out their fax machine and send out a hate fax again,” he said. “To me, it seems to go hand in hand.”
Following Trump’s inauguration, instances of homophobic attacks have been on the rise.
A gay waiter in Kentucky received a homophobic message telling him he ‘needs Jesus’ instead of a tip, and a lesbian couple in Florida had a note left on their car telling them that they were “despised and detested”.
