Categories
News Trending Viral Worldwide

After harassing people celebrating Pride their boat burst into flames. Guess who saved them?

Harassing people is gross, no matter who they are. Harassing people who are flying rainbow flags expressing support for LGBTQIA+ people is particularly gross, considering the fact they are advocating for basic civil rights and human dignity. And evidently, harassing people who are flying Pride flags while boating is egregiously gross enough to piss off Poseidon and bring the heavy hammer of karma down upon your heads.

Or maybe it’s just a coincidence. Either way, this story shows that bigotry is no match for being the bigger person and that even if it ends up being a one-way street, caring about the well-being of our fellow humans is always the right thing to do.

While boating in Moses Lake, Washington last weekend, a group of boaters flying Pride flags found themselves confronted by three people in another boat. At first, they thought perhaps the boaters were coming up to express support for their rainbow flags, but it soon became apparent that wasn’t the case. As the boat circled around them, one of the passengers gave the Pride-flag flyers the middle finger, and the boaters allegedly shouted gay slurs as well.

Then the bigots’ boat caught fire and the people they were harassing ended up rescuing them after they jumped ship.

The story was told by Robbie on Twitter, who shared photos and video of the incident as well as issuing a statement to The Washington Post.

Robbie, a queer trans man who has withheld his name for fear of retaliation, told The Post that his family had spent the day swimming and tubing on the lake and stopped their boat around 7:00pm. A small vessel sped toward them, then circled around them at least six times, with the woman on the boat flipping them off and yelling something about “gays” and “flags.”

When the boat driver noticed that Robbie’s brother had started filming them, he tried to hide his face and drove away. Moments later, a loud bang came from the boat, and a plume of black smoke rose into the air.

“Holy crap!” said Robbie’s brother. “They blew up!” Then he drove toward the boaters who were swimming away from their burning boat and brought them aboard.

Of course, having your boat catch on fire in the middle of a lake is a terrible thing to have happen. Some might say it’s as terrible as having people going out of their way to harass you in the middle of a lake. Karma works in interesting ways.

It would be lovely to be able to share that the harassers had a wake-up call and apologized for their horrible behavior, but alas, they did not.

“The passengers were quite rude, shouting over us, ignoring my [inquiries] about their well-being when on the 911 call and smoking a Vape pen on our boat without even so much as asking if they could; several passengers of our boat have asthma,” Robbie told The Post.

Police came to put out the fire, and the bigoted boaters’ friends came to pick them up. When they left, they didn’t even say ‘Thank you” for the rescue.

But there was this little karmic detail to balance out the bad behavior.

Some people have said they just wouldn’t have even helped them, while others have pointed out that boaters are required to help boaters in distress as long as it doesn’t put their own vessel or passengers in danger. (Which of course begs the questionโ€”was it safe for Robbie and family to bring blatantly anti-gay bigots onto their boat?) Regardless, Robbie wrote on Twitter that the boaters were truly hurt and they felt bad for them. Helping them was simply the right thing to do, no matter how they acted before or responded after.

Robbie shared another Tweet two days later showing that they were not going to let the haters get them down.

“Happy Pride Wrath Month!”