Gay French Mayor Sent Bullets After Interview

Thierry Speitel, the gay mayor of the town Sigolsheim in eastern France, was shocked to find he had been mailed bullets earlier this week.

According to French news source The Local, the threatening package arrived on the heels of a recent interview Speitel gave in which he talked about marrying his partner and potentially adopting children in the near future. In the interview he also strongly spoke out against the homophobic incidents that have recently taken place throughout France and blamed extreme opponents of gay marriage for poisoning the county's social atmosphere.

The bullets Speitel received were accompanied by a newspaper copy of this interview, with several handwritten homophobic insults scrawled across it.

Speitel has reported the incident to the police. However, he is not the only elected official to recently receive such a threat. The Socialist president of France's lower house of parliament, Claude Bartolone, received a letter containing gunpowder the day before the National Assembly was to vote on the country's marriage equality bill. Additionally, Socialist deputies Hugues Fourage and Sylviane Bulteau were sent letters threatening to kidnap and kill them or their families if the bill was not withdrawn.