Dating App Hornet Takes on Anti-LGBT Hate Groups

Hornet, the gay dating app and social network, is getting political again -- putting up billboards countering anti-LGBT hate groups in cities where they are headquartered.

The campaign launched Thursday in Washington, D.C., with a mobile billboard picturing a male couple and the tagline "We're building families. The Family Research Council wants to destroy them." Billboards targeting the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., and Focus on the Family in Colorado Springs, Colo., will follow soon, and Hornet plans to put up messages countering other anti-LGBT groups around the country, with taglines tailored to them. The company is using the Southern Poverty Law Center's list of anti-LGBT hate groups as a guide.

"We are erecting these billboards across the country to draw attention to places from where hateful rhetoric and influence on anti-LGBTQ legislation stem. The billboards are a beacon of hope for the LGBTQ residents of these areas and a reminder to local leadership that we will not be silenced and we will not be erased," Hornet president Sean Howell said in a press release. "The 2016 elections created a divisive atmosphere in our country, and, by all accounts, hate crimes against minority groups have been on the rise. As a community, we will not be torn apart. We will continue to thrive and resist attempts by any groups to reverse the progress made over the last decades."

This is not the first time Hornet has made a political statement. In November 2015, it put up a billboard satirizing Donald Trump near the site of the Republican presidential debate in Milwaukee.

And Westboro, ever courting publicity, has already responded to the campaign via Twitter: