A homophobic “Karen” was filmed spewing anti-gay slurs as she stood with a right-wing group with Confederate flags as they came face to face with Black Lives Matter activists at an annual Independence Day celebration at the Covered Bridge in Elizabethton, Tennessee. The video of the woman, identified as Sonya Holt, went viral earlier this week.
Here’s a refresher:
Holt told WJHL that she has since lost her job at Keith Family Vision Clinic in Johnson City.
In the viral clip, Holt is seen yelling, “Come across the line fag boy. Come across the line,” to one of the protesters. She later screeched at the same man, “You are a gay homosexual piece of crap and you’re going to burn in Hell.”
Holt told WJHL: “As far as the gentleman that I said some bad remarks about his sexuality, prior to that, you’re not seeing that on video. I was just standing there, along with everybody else. And he called me ‘Ku Klux Karen’ because of my haircut. And he said that I was a member of the KKK. And he repeated this several times. And then when I lashed out at him and called him what I did, which I shouldn’t have said because his sexuality is none of my business. I was just angry and I lashed out.”
Seth Loven, the protester targeted by Holt, denied that he had said anything like it “besides calling her Karen with the flip phone or Karen.”
In another video, Holt was filmed yelling at a black protester: “White lives matter! You’re just a poor little black girl who’s got a messed up mind. White lives matter! White lives matter!”
Holt told WJHL that she would not have said the words to the girl if she had known she was 16-years-old: “I would like to apologize to the little girl. I did not know that she was a minor. If I had known she was a minor, I would have never spoken to her.”
Holt added, “I’m not racist at all. I have Black friends. I have Black relatives in my family. The reason that I was angry is because I was being accused of being in the Ku Klux Klan. Which I would never in my life be a part of. I think that’s horrible.”
