A
North Carolina-based gay couple claims they were victims of a brutal hate crime
that left them bruised and bloodied.
As
WSOCTV is reporting, Mark Little and
his partner Dustin Martin were
vacationing in Asheville when they say they were attacked by two women and a
man, who emerged from a passing car, while walking back to their hotel on Sept.
23. Little and Martin say the two women began taunting them with homophobic slurs,
including “faggot”, just
before the man physically attacked them.
“It’s just so
vile…just so hateful”,
Little is quoted by the news channel
as saying. “It was just so hateful. It’s awful”.
Added
Martin: “Hit me and take something. Hit
me and steal from me. But don’t hit me just because I like boys”.
A
number of local news outlets including WBTV are reporting that Asheville police
are still investigating the assault, and that no arrests have been made as of
yet. If the suspects are caught, they could be charged with simple assault
because sexual orientation and gender identity are not protected classes under
North Carolina’s existing hate crime laws.
As
Little told WBTV, “I
feel like that when the cop first came on the scene he just felt like it was
just an ordinary crime, but what had happened is we were hit just because we
were gay”.
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