A gay couple in Pennsylvania are bracing for another possible legal fight with neighbors who insist their battles have nothing to do with homophobia. That despite the fact their first skirmish left Keith Davis and David Ruth’s Chester County home vandalized with an antigay slur.
“Get out FAGS!” is what Davis found in June 2015, scrawled in red paint across both garage doors of their idyllic suburban home as he prepared to drive the couple’s two sons, ages 8 and 13, to summer camp. “I put both garage doors up,” Davis told WCAU-TV. “Thank God I was able to” before his boys saw the graffiti.
The vandalism was just one sad chapter in their war with the neighbors, who challenged the legality of a 6-foot high fence around their lawn, put up by the couple to keep their dogs from escaping, according to Gay Star News. The fence was knocked down in several places with a hacksaw, and the security system the men installed was vandalized five times.
And amid all this, the neighbors took them to court, in a fight that they say wiped out their life savings. But in the end, the judge sided with Davis and Ruth, ruling they could not only keep their fence but also build a swimming pool they had planned. The lawsuit, said the judge, was clearly about “more than a fence.”
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To pay their legal bills, the couple have set up a GoFundMe account, which has raised more than $25,000 so far.
Watch the report from WCAU here.