Guys, whether or not it was a hate crime a) doesn't really matter, a crime was committed and people could have died and b) is a natural conclusion. A few months after I came out my house was egged and dead frogs were put in my mailbox. My mother called the school (I was still in high school at the time) because she thought I might be getting targeted for being an out gay man. The house was egged one more time and then nothing else happened. It was probably some nasty neighborhood kids who picked a house and egged it a couple times, nothing more nothing less. Cops found nothing, school found nothing. Didn't stop my mom from being afraid and didn't stop me from, briefly, thinking it. When a crime is committed against a gay person, a person of color, a disabled person, a woman etc it's hard *not* to think about the possibility that it was motivated by hatred. Naturally being so well known doesn't help either. It's only natural to see a hate crime even if it wasn't one.