(LifeSiteNews) — An unidentified vandal carrying a rainbow LGBTQ “Pride” flag defaced at least three churches with “anti-Christian” graffiti in Queens, New York.
The suspect, masked with a rainbow cloth, first graffitied Refuge Church of Christ with the words “anti-gay cult” at 1:40 a.m., according to police, the New York Post reported.
The vandal scrawled the same message onto the nearby City of Oasis Church of Deliverance, about 100 feet away.
At about 2 a.m., the criminal struck St. Mary’s Star of the Sea Church at 19-20 New Haven Ave. He attacked this Catholic church more thoroughly, spray-painting “Welcome Cult Members” and “cult” onto the church walls and sidewalks, and also painting over the faces of two religious statues there, said police.
The NYPD Hate Crime Task Force is investigating the vandalism as “multiple acts of criminal mischief as a hate crime.”
Attacks on Christian churches, and especially Catholic churches, have exploded in recent years in the U.S., although this has largely been connected with the U.S. Supreme Court’s draft Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, since the leak of the decision triggered a spike in such attacks.
A Family Research Council (FRC) report from August identified 1,384 acts of hostility against Christian churches committed between January 2018 and December 2024. The evangelical group found that 50 crimes were committed in 2018, 83 in 2019, 55 in 2020 and 98 in 2021. However, in 2022, when Dobbs was leaked, the numbers of attacks more than doubled, hitting 198.
These hostile aggressions more than doubled again in 2023, reaching 485, before leveling off in 2024 with 415. Of the 2024 number, the majority of incidents were vandalism (284). There were 55 cases of arson, 28 gun-related crimes, and 14 bomb threats.
