A Brown County church was vandalized over the weekend with a swastika, an anti-gay slur and the phrase “Heil Trump.”
St. David’s Episcopal Church, located off State Road 135 in Bean Blossom, plans to leave the graffiti up until the end of the month to show it is a safe place for all people, said the Rev. Kelsey Hutto.
“Symbols are what you make them,” Hutto said. “And we can be embarrassed, we can be angry, but what we’re choosing to do is we’re choosing to look at them as an encouragement of doing the right thing.”
“We’re being open and we’re inclusive to people,” Hutto said. “It doesn’t matter where you come from, what color you are or who you love, you’ll always have a place at St. David’s.”
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The Brown County Sheriff’s Department said they have no suspects. The police report was shared with a state hate crime task force investigator.
The Episcopal Church has openly accepted gay people since the 1970s, and in 2003, the church had its first openly gay bishop. In 2015, the canons of the church were changed to make the rite of marriage available to all people, regardless of gender, the denomination’s website says.
“We respect the dignity of every human being, and because of that, we were targets of what I can only define as a hate crime,” Hutto said.
Hutto, who has been with St. David’s for a year, hopes, but doesn’t expect, this will be the last time the church is targeted.
