Howard is a very good friend of mine and he is going through some challenges establishing his Massage Therapy business in Manassas. Turns out bigotry has reared it’s ugly head in old town Manassas. He made the the news, first in the Manassas City Journal, and now the Washington Post. Sadly the Post’s article (Monday, Oct 16; Page B01), while sympathetic to Howard’s plight, is not clear enough on several points.
“The city’s response and the community opposition have blindsided Daniel and his supporters, one of whom had an anti-gay message written on his car.”
This sentence is less than perfect, it leaves doubt about who wrote the anti-gay message on Howard’s neighbor’s car. It was not Howard’s neighbor who wrote the message – some vandal did it, and the message included obscenity; it would be a petty act of vandalism except that it is also a hate crime.
Howard’s neighbors all love having Howard and Richard around; they keep an immaculate house and garden, participate in all their communities’ activities and actively help their neighbors and others in the area whenever they can.
The article goes on to imply that council member Harrover is concerned about traffic in the neighborhood, yet Howard’s application and supporting documentation clearly detail his expected customer traffic rates, and they are tiny. Much tinier than existing massage therapy businesses in old town Manassas.
This is only political because the bigots have made it so. It should be a purely business decision; but the town council is nervous about elections and their racist constituents opinion of them should they approve a new business by an openly bi-racial, gay, and Buddhist couple. I wonder which hot-buttons this sets off for those members of All Saints Catholic Church. Oh wait, maybe it’s not racial, religious, gay-bashing… perhaps they just don’t want a veteran to run a business in old town; for Howard is also a former Marine reservist, and we all know how rough those former Marines can be.
On a serious note; Howard and Richard are glad this has happened because it is calling attention to a problem people try to hide from in Manassas. The is finally openly discussing these issues and people are learning from this and similar inappropriate actions; we all hope Manassas will learn from this issue, and grow individually and as a community.
Shout out to Greg, who beat me to the punch posting about this.
Update: WRC-TV (NBC) News story and Rick Sincere posted about it too.
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