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Feds: Fire was hate crime

Federal agents on Monday confirmed the weekend blaze at St. John’s Reformed United Church of Christ in Middlebrook was arson and a hate crime against the church.

“We’re looking at it as a civil rights violation,” Lawrence Barry, spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, said Monday.

The arson falls in line with federal hate-crime statutes banning attacks on property “with a religious character.”

Meanwhile, investigators with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms have “definitely” ruled the Saturday morning fire as arson, said Bart McEntire, resident agent in charge of the ATF in southwest Virginia.

Scrawled on the outer brick walls of the Middlebrook church were “SINNER,” “LESB HELL” and “GAYS LOVER.” Investigators, along with St. John’s Pastor Dorcas Lohr, are convinced the graffiti refers to last week’s decision by the national United Church of Christ to endorse gay marriage. The decision is not binding on individual churches....