Village 'horrified' after gay couple's home torched

The National Post:

In the early morning hours of Oct. 18, a firebomb was reportedly tossed through the bedroom window of a bungalow in the little village of Little Pond, P.E.I., forcing the middle-aged gay couple who lived there to flee. As the flames grew, one of the men dragged the other from the same broken pane of the disintegrating bungalow, and the efforts of 20 firefighters would not be enough to stop the fire from consuming the entire home.

"The residence is a total loss," a Kings District RCMP bulletin reads.

The identities of the men have not been released -- neither by police nor the local media -- for privacy's sake. But there is nothing private about the "cruel, criminal" act that threatened the lives of the two men, said a local reverend, who on Sunday spoke from the Dundas United Church pulpit to urge tolerance and support for the couple, aged 47 and 52.

Just one week before, the couple's mailbox was torched. Police say a criminal is at work, and friends fear someone wanted the couple dead.

"Everybody on the street was talking about it and why it might have happened, and we had to stand up and say, 'This is not us,' " said Rev. Beth Johnston, who spoke on the telephone with one of the men this week. "Whether it's the legal definition of hate crime or not, it seems to me to be quite clear that they were targeted because they are a gay couple."

She said the couple is in shock and "just trying to recover" from the loss of their home and their sense of security. Friends of the couple told local media that the men are afraid for their lives, even apprehensive to return to the lot to salvage burned remnants of their belongings.

The men moved to Little Pond five years ago, and one resident said they had recently "fixed up" their "nice-looking property" on Route 310, which is the main road through the community with a population of just a hundred or so.

Residents describe Little Pond as a quiet place whose neighbours know one another, despite the sprawling swathes of country land that separate their rural homes.

"When [the couple] moved to the area, they would have had no reason to believe they would have anything but supportive neighbours," said Jane Dunphy, a councillor in the municipality of Annandale-Little Pond-Howe Bay, who lives a few kilometres from the crime scene. "Anybody I have talked to is really, really horrified and hurt that this could happen."

RCMP Sgt. Bob Fogarty said the RCMP is considering hosting a meeting with residents to talk about the crime.

Although Ms. Dunphy calls the Prince Edward Island community "welcoming," a local advocacy organization has said the Island's rural communities suffer from closed-mindedness toward the gay community.

"On P.E.I., it is so hush-hush," Alana Leard, a coordinator with the Abegweit Rainbow Collective, told Charlottetown's The Guardian.

"Something needs to be done, and I really hope that this [fire] isn't being taken lightly."