A church in Maryland that put up the sign "Black Lives Matter" had the sign vandalized, as someone removed the word "Black" from the sign not once, but twice.

A "Black Lives Matter" sign at a Maryland church was vandalized on Tuesday for the second time in less than a month.

The River Road Unitarian Universalist Congregation, which the Washington Post reports is predominantly white, wanted to highlight the struggles of their black brothers and sisters by placing a "Black Lives Matter" sign outside their Bethesda church. After vandals defaced it, all that's left is "Lives Matter."

Gabrielle Farrell, a religious leader at River Road, told The Huffington Post  that... "Yes, all lives matter," Farrell told HuffPost. "But the 'Black Lives Matter' phrase is voiced by real people calling attention to situations that we wish to call attention to as well. So we don't change the words."

 This type of vandalism has been seen elsewhere. In Ottawa, Canada, a mural dedicated to Sandra Bland -- a black Texas woman who died in police custody after being arrested during a traffic stop -- was defaced with the words "All Lives Matter" earlier this week.

Isn't it fun that when an exclusionary message is changed to an inclusionary one, it's called a "defacement"?

Rev. Jennifer Bailey, founder of the Faith Matters Network and ordained elder in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, believes the impulse to cut the word "black" out of the phrase comes from a deep-seated fear. 

No, it doesn't come out of fear.  It comes out of resentment of a slogan that seems to put one race above all else.  How would blacks in the South like it if white churches hung banners reading "White Lives Matter"?  They would see that as racist.

"I think there are a lot of folks who nationally see a shift in demographics and a hyper-visualizing of bodies and people who aren't usually seen," Bailey told HuffPost. "And there are people who view that as a threat to their own being. There's a real fear about displacement."

The phrase "Black Lives Matter" isn't meant to suggest that other lives don't, Bailey pointed out. 

Sure.  You know, when Martin Luther King, Jr. marched, he wasn't marching merely for black rights.  He was marching for all peoples' rights.  That's why so many white Republicans and a handful of Democrats marched with him.  How do "BlackLivesMatter" people intend to bring everyone together if their motto explicitly focuses only on one race?  What about the excesses of the BLM movement, the rioting, the looting, the hypocrisy of the real causes of black deaths?

In any event, the minute you start singling out one race, it looks exclusionary and elitist, as if that race is more important than the others.

That's why as a lawyer I deplore this invasion of private property, but as a human being I am glad that someone has decided to expose the hypocrisy.  I just wish they had done it in a more legal way.

This article was produced by NewsMachete.com, the conservative news site.

Drew Belsky adds:

On the other hand, blacking out the word "black" may not have been the best way for the vandal to get his point across.