Man pours glitter into car after driver calls him a ‘faggot’

Nick Hurley, gay man who threw glitter at a driver who called him a "faggot".

A man on his way to Brighton Pride had the best response to a driver calling him a “faggot” – by emptying a tube of glitter into the homophobe’s car.

Nick Hurley, 27, was walking home from his work in Manchester on Friday (August 3) when a man driving past shouted the anti-gay slur at him.

The digital artist, who is gay,  explained to PinkNews: “I had just stopped off on the way to pick up some glitter before heading home to get changed and pick up a bag [as] I was on my way to Brighton Pride for the weekend.

“While going down Whitworth Street in Manchester – a road I walk down at least twice a day – a car screeched past with two guys in, and the one yelled out of the window ‘faggot’ at me.

“They then came to a stop at the next set of traffic lights. By which time I had caught up with them. And in a moment of white-hot creative rage, I emptied a tube of glitter into their car through the passenger window.

“They seemed confused and dumbfounded, and didn’t say anything. The lights changed and they drove off, while I took a sharp left turn down onwards on my journey home.”

On his walk back, Hurley decided to posted about what had happened to him on Twitter.

The tweet has since gone viral, with more than 151,000 “likes.”

“If you think it’s okay to shout “faggot” at me out of your car window while you drive past, then I think it’s okay for me to empty a tube of glitter through that window when you stop at the traffic lights,” he wrote on Twitter.

“Your casual homophobia has supergay consequences.”

Hurley told PinkNews that he posted the tweet to “share in the ridiculousness of what had just happened with my handful of Twitter followers,” adding that it “totally unexpectedly” went viral.

He then created a Twitter thread, asking those who had read his post to donate to Stonewall by texting “STONEWALL” to 70500 to donate £5.

Hurley was heading home to get changed for Brighton Pride when he received homophobic abuse. (Nick Hurley)

“Without anything to promote or sell myself, I thought it would be a good place to raise some of Stonewall’s work to people’s attention, so I started a Twitter thread with details of how to donate to them,” Hurley told PinkNews.

“I’ve been absolutely flooded with well-wishers and overwhelmed with the number of people who have said they’ve donated on the back of it. It feels good that I was able to turn a hate crime into something much more positive, all with some added glitter.”

In a later tweet, Hurley, who wrote a blog describing what happened to him, insisted that the glitter he used was biodegradable to those who were “concerned over environmental impact” of his “glitter activism.”