Gay man running for local office in Missouri says campaign banner was defaced with homophobic slur

An openly gay candidate for local office in Missouri said on Twitter that vandals have defaced one of his campaign banners with a homophobic slur.

On Sunday, Justice Horn, a long-time community activist who’s running for the Jackson County Legislature, shared a photo of the large campaign sign with the word “f-g” spray-painted over it — adding that he will not be intimidated by it.

“Today I learned that my campaign banner was defaced with a homophobic slur here in Kansas City,” Horn, a former college wrestler, wrote on social media.

“I’ll admit, this one hurt because like so many us of who experience this, this word is used to harm us. Either way, I’m not going to back down and I’m going to hold my head high,” he added.

Horn is running to serve Jackson County’s first district on the Jackson County Legislature, which covers parts of Kansas City, and faces a primary on Aug 2.

If he wins, he will be the first openly LGBTQ person elected to the Jackson County government, the only openly LGBTQ county official in Missouri, and also the first Black representative of the first district, according to the LGBTQ Victory Fund, an organization that works to elect openly LGBTQ people at all levels of government.

On Monday, in an interview with the Kansas City Star, Horn said that he decided not to file a police report, but noted that he was “specifically targeted” because of his sexual orientation.

“I don’t know how much more blatantly that this was a hate crime,” he said, noting that the vandalism happened during the day.

“What bothers me the most is that it happened in broad daylight. They were so emboldened to do this. It was specifically a defacing to attack me not based on my policy or my candidacy but on me personally. It was the same as calling me the N-word,” he said, calling the incident “below the belt” and “unfair.”

His first reaction was “one of shock, anger and energy to prove whoever defaced the banner wrong,” he told Outsports while adding that he also felt energized to fight even harder to represent minorities in the county.

“It’s lit a fire in me to ensure that our community finally has a seat at the table,” he said.