Woman travels United States in VW bug to raise awareness about intolerance

Shelly Donahue/paperSupporter Elyse Martin checks to see if the wind will fly her flag before the start of a rally from Wynn Las Vegas. Shelly Donahue/VIEWSupporters Krista McBrayer, left, and Chris Cipiraso put slogans on their car before the start of a rally from Wynn Las Vegas. The supporters took to the Strip on July 27 to raise awareness about hate crimes. New Yorker Erin Davies visited Las Vegas as part of her tour against intolerance. Advertisement

Margo Smith said she would have expected to be the target of hate crime in her native Iowa -- one reason she never came out as a lesbian until recently. But it was a little more than a month ago in Las Vegas, where she has lived for the past year, that she was attacked.

She said she was dropping a female friend off after a long night of playing music with a group of their friends. They sat in her friend's driveway and talked until her friend's stepfather, whom Smith had never met, emerged from the house and started yelling at them and shouting slurs about Smith's sexual orientation.

Smith got her friend's bag out of the car and tried to leave. She was struggling with her seatbelt and the driver's side window was rolled down. It was then that her friend's stepfather punched her twice in the ear and a third time in the cheek.

Smith said he told her, "You're supposed to be tough," and said she believes he would have continued to attack her, but her friend restrained him. Smith drove away and called the police.

She's had some pain in her ear since then and said the doctors she saw believe there's no damage to her eardrum, but there may be some fluid behind it.

"He just attacked me because I'm gay," she said, adding, "It's hard to make heads or tails of blind hatred like that."

This is just one reason she feels Erin Davies' Fagbug tour, which stopped in Las Vegas on July 26 and 27, was important.

Davies is an art education graduate student living in Albany, N.Y., whose grey Volkswagen bug was vandalized in April. Instead of replacing or repainting the car, marked with the words "Fag" and "U R Gay" in red spray paint, she's taking it on a national tour to raise awareness about hate crimes and making a documentary about the journey.

Davies came to Las Vegas July 26 and stayed to caravan down Las Vegas Boulevard with supporters on July 27.

At the first Fagbug event in Las Vegas, local band Nurse Ratchet played at the Beauty Bar, and well wishers crowded around Davies and the Fagbug, which she pulled up into Beauty Bar's back patio area. After the performance and a brief introduction from Jeff Garofalo with Human Rights Campaign, an organization working for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender equality, Davies told her story.

Davies got in touch with Smith through Las Vegas Lesbians after hearing about her experience. Davies then invited Smith to join her on a radio show on Nevada Public Radio. The two women returned to the site of Smith's attack, and Davies interviewed her for the documentary.

On July 27, a handful of Davies' supporters met on top of the Wynn Las Vegas parking garage. Members of Las Vegas Lesbians handed out "Stop Hate Crimes" magnets, and participants decorated their cars with rainbow flags and slogans. Krista McBrayer wrote the words "Dyke" and "Lesbo" on the windows of her car in black china marker, with help from her girlfriend Chris Cipriaso. McBrayer said her decorations were inspired by Davies' car.

"I've been run off the road twice because of my car -- so I feel her," she said.

McBrayer's car sports a rainbow sticker in the shape of a mudflap girl, a woman leaning back on her hands, and vanity plates that read "PRD2BME." There's no question in McBrayer's mind that she was being run down because of her stickers because, both times, her attackers shouted homophobic slurs. She had her children with her.

"So, of course, I had to have the conversation with my kids, who are young, about why people hate things that are different," she said.

The tiny caravan parade took off under the cloud of a gathering dust storm to be rewarded by a few cheers from pedestrians on the Strip. The group made its way down to Mandalay Bay for group photos in front of the "Welcome to Las Vegas" sign.

"I think it's a great idea to let people know (hate crimes) still happen," Smith said. She said she was just getting to know people in local gay and activist organizations like Human Rights Campaign and Las Vegas Lesbians. She said she had already gotten very comfortable in her tolerant circle of friends and being physically attacked for her sexuality was a shock for her and her friends.

Davies has met with a number of hate crime victims and their family members on tour, and marvels that because someone tagged her car, "now I'm connected with people all over the world."

She believes her car was tagged because of the long, thin rainbow sticker that stretches across her bumper. While waiting for the police across the street in her girlfriend's car, she watched other people's shocked reactions to her car for an hour. During the five days it took her insurance company to give her a quote on the damage, she had time to think about the experience, whether she wanted to or not. Her neighbors, co-workers and classmates continually approached her about it with concern and sympathy.

"I kept trying to distance myself, but this conversation kept coming to me," Davies said. A friend suggested she just drive the car the way it was. When she drove it to school, it created pandemonium both among those who supported what she was doing, and those -- like a public safety officer -- who wanted her to remove the car from campus. By the second day, she appeared on the news. A week later, her school held a march for her.

Finally, a friend in Baltimore suggested she take the car cross-country. He came up with the name Fagbug, registered the domain name www.fagbug.com and made her a MySpace page within 24 hours. By the time her girlfriend's mother suggested she make fagbug stickers, Davies had moved from wanting to replace her car as soon as possible and put the incident behind her to deciding to take a 55-day tour in her newly-christened Fagbug and document her experiences. Instead of removing the rainbow sticker, as some co-workers encouraged her to do, she made rainbow bug stickers and T-shirts to help defray the cost of touring. She is encouraging everyone to put the stickers on their car, regardless of sexual orientation, so no one will be targeted as she was.

After the tour is over, Davies said she wants to try to get the documentary into as many film festivals as possible.

She wants to reach as many people as she can, she said, because "if you never see it, then you think it's not a problem."

Davies said even she didn't realize how often people were still being killed for being gay. On her travels, she has learned about Sean Kennedy and others murdered in the past year because they were gay. She spent three days in South Carolina with Kennedy's mother, who is, she said, "the most incredible person I've ever met."

Apart from stickers and T-shirts, the tour is funded though private donations and a loan from her father -- so far, she has sold 270 stickers. But she said she's had a lot of support of all kinds along the way.

"There's people all around the country, like Emmily (Bristol), who are organizing for me and that's awesome," Davies said.

Emmily Bristol is the local writer and activist who launched the two Las Vegas Fagbug events. She heard about Davies' tour on the feminist blog www.feministing.com and sent her an e-mail inviting her to come to Las Vegas. While organizing the events, Bristol has collaborated with a number of gay and lesbian groups and, she said, "people have been curious why I care since I don't appear to be a lesbian."

Although Bristol is not a lesbian, she sees Davies' story as being part of larger issues of social equality.

"Someone writing hate speech on a bug -- we need that to not just be about being gay," she said.

Bristol helped Davies get a free oil change and some minor repairs from Findlay Volkswagen, and local artist Jeff Hagen did a series of Fagbug inspired paintings on metal to raise funds. Davies stayed for two nights at Harrah's with help from Harrah's diversity specialist and Human Rights Campaign member Gwen Migita.

Davies said the Friday night event, which crowded the Beauty Bar and its patio, had the biggest turnout of any event on her tour.