Two men spray-painted and smashed the windshield of a tour bus used by the National Organization for Marriage in “broad daylight” Thursday in New York City, the pro-marriage group says.
The two men “approached the bus with a can of spray paint and a hammer and they began spray-painting on the side of the bus,” National Organization for Marriage spokesman Joe Grabowski told The Daily Signal in a phone interview.
The bus driver tried to stop the men during the incident, which occurred near the United Nations, Grabowski said.
“There was a bit of an altercation and then they smashed the windshield with the hammer and put a couple of holes inside of the bus as well as spray-painting it,” Grabowski said.
The men spray-painted what appeared to be slogans in favor of “LGBT rights” for lesbian, bisexual, gay, and transgender individuals. One said: “Trans liberation,” another “Trans rights.”
“They were able to get away,” he said. “The driver was not injured except for a scrape on his hand.”
National Organization for Marriage, which defends marriage as the union of one man and one woman, calls the bus its Free Speech Bus.
The bus tour is a joint initiative with CitizenGo, which seeks to “defend and promote life, family, and liberty,” and the International Organization for the Family, which works to protect marriage globally.
The #FreeSpeechBus in front of the United Nations Headquarters in New York pic.twitter.com/cSgj4KbXhj
— CitizenGO (@CitizenGO) March 22, 2017
The purpose of the bus, Grabowski said, is to “convey the message [that] biology is the basis of sex, that we are made male and female, and that’s rooted in biology and can’t be changed.”
Any prominent LGBT leaders who will come out and publically condemn this? Or is this now acceptable behavior? #FreeSpeechBus #shame pic.twitter.com/1wbNnnhTzL
— NOM (@NOMupdate) March 23, 2017
The New York Police Department is investigating the incident. Grabowski said his organization doesn’t know the identities of the vandals.
Don't worry, @ChelseaClinton, we'll be there soon. ? #FreeSpeechBus @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/gAJh6haRfs
— CitizenGO (@CitizenGO) March 4, 2017
This incident, he said, illustrates the lack of tolerance some have on the issues of same-sex marriage and gender identity:
We would also point out that if the shoe were on the other foot, if this was a transgender rights bus, that had a bus driver [been] pushed around and the vehicle vandalized, that would be all over the major news outlets, and it would also probably spur a civil rights investigation from the Justice Department. There’s a great amount of hypocrisy we feel.
https://twitter.com/ScrappyGaGgot/status/845025563819589634
Gregory Mertz, U.S. director of CitizenGO, told The Daily Signal in an email that the bus was in New York City until Friday to participate in the 61st session of the Commission on the Status of Women at the United Nations.
The session, which began March 13 and ended Friday, sought “how to mandate comprehensive sexuality education to children as young as 4 years of age, which includes the teaching of gender ideology,” Mertz said.
According to its website, the Commission on the Status of Women at the U.N. says its purpose is to advance women’s rights, “documenting the reality of women’s lives throughout the world, and shaping global standards on gender equality and the empowerment of women.”
Ryan T. Anderson, a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal in an email that civility must surround the debate on both sides of the issue:
For most Americans, debates surrounding the concept of gender identity are new. Rather than rush to impose a politically correct orthodoxy on the entire country, we need to foster civil and thoughtful conversations.
https://twitter.com/Abhinc33/status/845229033176608768
The bus will continue its tour along the East Coast, despite “some major costs to get the bus back on the road this weekend,” Grabowski said.
The Free Speech Bus is scheduled to travel to Rhode Island, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Washington, D.C., in the coming week.