A small Massachusetts town is rallying behind a gay couple who received homophobic hate mail by buying T-shirts with a reclaimed slur on them
- A gay couple received hatemail addressed to "Michelle Fruitzey" - a play on a homophobic slur.
- In solidarity with the couple, the residents of their town started wearing #iammichellefruitzey T-shirts.
- Sales of the T-shirts have raised over $25,000 for local LGBTQ groups.
When LeeMichael McLean, 44, and Bryan Furze, 45, shared a picture of a piece of homophobic hate mail they had received in the post, they didn't expect it would lead to their whole town rallying behind them.
"I put it out there because I wanted to crowdsource information about the handwriting, but also I wanted to put pressure on this person and to try to scare them," McLean told Insider. "But I could not have imagined what happened next."
The handwritten subscription card was addressed to "Michele Fruitzey" - a play on the derogatory "fruity" term sometimes used to describe gay men - and was just one of the over 30 offensive subscription cards that the gay couple had been sent over a period of five years, McLean told Insider.
The photo of the card, shared by McLean on the "Milton Neighbors" Facebook group, helped a resident of the Massachusetts town to identify the perpetrator as one of their neighbor's, Insider reported.
But it also resulted in a remarkable show of solidarity by residents of their small Boston suburb.
After posting the Michelle Fruitzey subscription card, McLean said that a local politician used the #iammichellefruitzey hashtag in solidarity with the couple. "Somebody else in that Facebook group picked up on that and said we should get T-shirts saying that so that we can wear them around town," he said.
The couple didn't think much of it until McLean sought help from a mental health professional. "I was really struggling with the weight of five years of abuse with nowhere to put the feelings and no way to take actions against this thing that was happening to us," he said.
"Then the mental health professional told me I needed to find a way to channel this energy and the emotions into something more positive and to try and do some good with it," McLean added.
McLean approached his husband and discussed the possibility of selling T-shirts to raise money for gay-straight alliance organizations at local schools. They went ahead with it, seeing it as a way to make something great out of a bad situation, and sales took off immediately.
Hundreds bought the T-shirts with the hashtag #iammichellefruitzey on them, much to the couple's surprise.
"We suddenly got an incredible outpouring of support from every corner of our town," McLean said. "From people we know, people we don't know, people who are of different political beliefs than us. It was across the board unanimous support, and it was amazing."
In three weeks, the couple sold hundreds of T-shirts and raised more than $25,000 for LGBTQ groups at Milton High School and Pierce Middle School.
The couple now hopes that the homophobia they experienced, and the consequent show of solidarity, encourage members of marginalized communities to hold their heads high.
"You have to be willing to stand up for yourself," McLean said. "Because you're not going to believe the amount of support that you will get. It's way more than the number of bullies that are out there."