Trans teen mocked by couple after he stops them heckling Black Lives Matter bake sale
A 17-year-old transgender teen was mocked and harassed after he stepped in to intervene when he saw a man and a woman giving a hard time to volunteers at a bake sale benefiting the Black Lives Matter movement.
Jasper Lauter, 17, was busy walking around the areas of Bolinas and Elsie in Fairfax, California, just north of San Francisco, on Saturday night placing rainbow flags on telephone poles and around the neighborhood in celebration of Pride month when he happened across a man and a woman harassing volunteers at a bake sale meant to benefit the Black Lives Matter movement.
Lauter stepped in to help diffuse the situation and was immediately met with a verbal assault of hate filled homophobic and gender discriminatory comments by the couple.
"You look like a female! There's only two, male and female, that's it!" the unidentified woman can be heard yelling at Lauter in the viral video as she approaches him pointing at his crotch and asking what genitals he has.
"They're mocking me and they're laughing at me and degrading me which is obviously incredibly traumatic." Lauter told ABC News’ San Francisco station KGO in an interview. "They kept calling me lady and sweetheart even though I said 'look, I'm a man.'”
Lauter can be heard in the video saying that it is “really hard to see old people being so blind” before he is met my disparaging comments by the unidentified man.
The couple are asked several times in the video to leave and refuse to do so.
According to KGO, Fairfax Police arrived shortly after the video ended and quickly identified the couple. The incident, which is currently being categorized as a verbal assault, is now under investigation.
Authorities are now trying to determine if what they can be categorized as a hate crime or falls under another statute that requires prosecution.
Said Lieutenant Rico Tabaranza: "When we see this, it upsets our community specifically because the police department and community, we all get along."
Lauter, however, has a message for the public after the ugly encounter he had over the weekend.
“We need to stop pushing it under the rug and turning our heads away and that was my main goal with spreading it as far and wide as it has gotten,” said Lauter. "The most important thing is we need to … ask ourselves what can we do to be better. I need somebody to stand up. If you don't stand up when that's happening, it's just going to continue"
