On Wednesday, Eureka, California gay couple Brian Kleinmeyer and Daniel Kain discovered that someone had taken the gingerbread men they had placed as Christmas decorations on their front lawn, smeared feces on them and then laid them in front of the couple’s small Pride flag nearby.
“Last night, somebody came to our home on Myrtle, and wiped feces all over our Gingerbread Men,” Kleinmeyer later wrote in a public Facebook post. “They literally ripped them out of the ground, and wiped their asses with them, and carefully laid them at the base of our Pride Flag… I thought things might get stolen, but never in a million years did I think this would happen. I’m completely in shock.”
Kleinmeyer wrote that Eureka Police Chief Steve Watson subsequently called to inform the couple that he “fully intends to charge whoever did this with a hate crime.”
Watson told The Lost Coast Outpost, “It’s very clear in my mind this was a deliberate act based on the suspect’s perception of [the victims’] sexual orientation,” calling the vandalism an “absolutely horrendous and appalling thing.”