Gay Community Seeks Sign Vandals

Members of Ventura County’s gay community are looking for the vandals who tore down a sign at the front of the Gay and Lesbian Community Center on Ventura’s Main Street.

Officials at the center, located next to Ventura High School, said the sign was destroyed over the Fourth of July weekend. The incident follows other anti-gay vandalism at the center in recent years, they said.

“We are at a loss to explain such hatred,” said Neil Coffman-Grey, coordinator of the center’s anti-violence empowerment committee.

Coffman-Grey said that in December 1994 the center’s windows were plastered with eggs. A year later, the center’s front window and neon sign were shattered by a band of bat-wielding, rock-throwing youths. And in January, anti-gay epithets and threats were being yelled into the center.

Students from the high school also have been seen spitting at the sign as they passed by after school, Coffman-Grey said.

No other signs in the area were targeted. Destruction of the center’s sign, which has graced the building since May 1995, “is a blow to the identity of our community,” Coffman-Grey said.