Nathan Stang was discovered in 2016 to have staged a hate crime against his own place of employment, St. David’s Episcopal Church in Bean Blossom, Indiana.
Days after Donald Trump was elected president, Stang, who is gay, defaced the church where he was employed at the time as an organist with an image of a swastika and the words “Heil Trump” and “Fag Church.” Stang then reported his own crime — he did not identify himself as the perpetrator, obviously.
The national press, including the Washington Post, was quick to cover the story, pumping out headlines warning of the rise of fascist, anti-gay Trump supporters amid a wave of post-election hate-crime stories that were nearly all proven later to be hoaxes.
Stang was soon exposed for having slandered his community with a vicious lie. He not only slandered his neighbors, but he also terrorized them with the idea that someone local would commit such a crime.
Amazingly, nearly three years after the fact, the Washington Post is here to defend Stang’s motivations, arguing that the fear and angst that supposedly inspired him to commit the crime in 2016 were justified because — you know, Trump!
After warning that only a tiny fraction of the 6,121 crimes of bias reported that year was fake, the Post goes on to make the case that just about everybody is the victim here except for the local Trump voters whom Stang viciously maligned.
The piece refers to Stang’s crime as “shocking.” Not just because of the “painful homophobic slur,” but also because of “the damage Stang had done to victims of real hate crimes by handing a talking point to those seeking to delegitimize them.”
The profile is careful to quote a St. David’s Episcopal Church parishioner who agrees with the report’s framing that Stang’s anger and fear were justified, implying that the hoax itself was maybe also a little bit justified:
Throughout the entire Washington Post profile, county prosecutor Ted Adams, a Republican, seems to be the only person with his head screwed on straight. Stang’s crime “turned 65 percent of the county against 35 percent of the county for no need,” Adams told the newspaper.
This speaks to the fundamental problem with this profile of Stang — it offers a liar and hoaxer implicit justifications for his crime while ignoring its actual victims. Indeed, the voters Stang slandered with the help of careless, credulous journalists are just an afterthought in a piece dedicated almost entirely to defending the person who wronged them.
The Washington Post article ends with an anecdote about Stang’s estranged mother’s attempt to stay in contact with him, including the time she sent a distressed email that read in part “I’m yelling for you, can you hear me?”
I’m yelling for you, can you hear me?
Oh, please.
For his part, Stang appears to be genuinely contrite for what he did to the people of Bean Blossom and beyond. Everyone deserves redemption. But the Washington Post wants him to have it without also acknowledging the vicious nature of his crime or the humanity of his victims.
