Luisa Fernanda Montoya moved to Kingwood, Texas, six months ago. All was fine until she put up her LGBTQ flag on her house. Then hate rained.
LGBTQ hate rained down on her family in Kingwood, Texas.
Luisa Fernanda Montoya is a proud mother. She wanted to show solidarity with her gay kid. She noticed that her Kingwood, Texas neighborhood was friendly to flags and political yard signs. She decided to participate. She raised the LGBTQ flag and also showed her support for Beto O’Rourke. She did not realize the insensitivity and harassment that would follow.
Neighborhood hoodlums started by ringing her doorbell at all hours of the night. Her kids were bullied in the neighborhood and in school. She said the school was less than sympathetic, so she took one of her kids out of school.
It came to a head this week, as relayed by Luisa. She heard loud glass breaking in her home. The neighborhood thugs broke a window in her home. Her 17-year-old kid ran outside to see what was going on, trailing the hoodlums who did the bad deed. They surrounded him and started trying to knock him off of his bike.
Luisa approached with her car. When the hoodlums realized who she was, they split. One guy abandoned his bike to run. She put the bike in her trunk as evidence.
As she got home, Luisa said the guy who owned the bike came back to her home and assaulted her in an attempt to get the bike back.
She was thrown around. Her son came to her aid and was scratched up.
During this entire event, her younger son and a neighbor called the police. She had to call back to get them to come out. And when she explained what happened and showed the video, the police officer was less than sympathetic.
There were five incidents this week, including hoodlums shouting homophobic slurs with a bullhorn, a broken window, an attempted break-in to her garage, and three hoodlums ringing her bell and calling her a retard.
When Luisa told them she was calling the police, they walked off shouting obscenities and slurs and then sped off.
Luisa is a runner. She feels trapped in her home as she is scared to leave and perform her daily life. She believes that the police have been less than empathetic and, in doing so, emboldened the hoodlums tormenting her family.
“When you have an accent, you get treated disrespectfully,” Luisa said, distraught. “And I can guarantee if I talked differently and looked differently — if they looked different — it would be so different.
Luisa ended with a prescient question. Why do they hate her kids, the family? She said that there are a lot of those proclaiming the love of Jesus, yet this is the action of some in the community. But what she finds more disconcerting is the absence of the community coming to her assistance except for one very nice woman.
I told Luisa she should be careful but not intimidated by neighborhood bullies. Do not allow them to run her out of her neighborhood. This story was too close for comfort. My home was firebombed with fireworks about 10 years ago, right here in Kingwood. One would think that the community would have extricated much of that hate by now.
Welcome to what hate looks like when it has been made vogue not solely by the past president but by the current culture governing Texas.
Here is Luisa Fernanda Montaya’s interview in Spanish.
Viewers are encouraged to subscribe and join the conversation for more insightful commentary and to support progressive messages. Together, we can populate the internet with progressive messages that represent the true aspirations of most Americans.