I recently got the wild hair to log onto Amazon.com and purchase my very first rainbow flag. It is one of their cheaper nylon printed flags, not the sewn cotton ones, because I fully expected to fly it only once. Like most gay people, I anticipate the imminent decision of the Supreme Court in the Obergefell case to fall on the side of marriage equality. And while I have been an active participant in years past in the LGBT civil rights movement, I have not been in the front lines leading the charge, wrapped in the flag, as it were. My husband and I lead a quiet life in a small North Carolina hamlet of 1,900 people. And if we were to organize a gay parade here, it would be seen as nothing so much as two middle aged and older (Teddy would strangle me if I called him “old”) gentlemen taking a stroll down Walnut Street. And we would look very odd if we were wielding a gay flag on our walk down the main street, past the post office, Auto Zone and the Food Lion.
But the historic impact of Obergefell is not lost on me. This is an earth moving, shattering landmark event for our community. It has a particularly potency for me and my husband of (depending on how one counts) 25 or three years. We had a lengthy engagement which began at a Sunday Tea Dance in a Downtown Raleigh club in 1998. However, we waited until 2013 on the formalities of the marriage ceremony, when we gathered in the red brick courtyard of the deliciously classical Dacor-Bacon House in DC, a few blocks from the White House--the former home of Chief Justice John Marshall, a place where Lincoln attended marriages. We are the happiest of couples. He makes me laugh.incessantly. And while I am probably perceived as a bristly, crotchety old crab in the general, with him I am a charming soul with a wit to match the fabled Ogden Nash.
We never fight. Well, I take that back. We had a misunderstanding eleven years ago that culminated in a plastic tub of mayonnaise flying across the kitchen and exploding like an egg filled hand grenade, triggering the first major repainting of our nineteenth century Queen Anne cottage. But that was a misunderstanding. We are obnoxiously, painfully in love. Truly in love and truly sappy--think along the lines of the Olivia Newton-John song, “Hopelessly Devoted to You.”
And so I bought the cheap, nylon Amazon.com flag for what I hoped would be our celebration of a victory. Unfortunately, we had no mast to fly it from. I therefore asked Teddy to head over to Lowe’s to pick up the hardware to fly the banner, which is really where I intended to start this essay.
“NO!” he screamed. “We are NOT flying that flag! I have been the target of bigots in the past and we are not going to do it again. I WILL NOT have a flag drawing every hate monger in a 30 mile radius to our house. Maybe if we lived in Raleigh, we could fly it. NOT HERE. I WILL NOT have a bulls eye painted on my home! We WILL NOT DO IT!” I met his anger with my anger. “I don’t know about you, but I AM NOT AFRAID. Maybe ‘they’ can hurt us. SO WHAT! I DON’T CARE. I am NOT AFRAID OF THEM ANYMORE,” at which point I took my flag like the proverbial bat and ball, and stomped away in my very best imitation of a gay hissy fit. But hours later, we reconciled. Teddy is more self-apparently gay than I am, and he has definitely suffered more for his gay appearance than I did in his formative years. If a piece of fabric hung out on the veranda causes him anxiety, it won’t fly. If our love means anything, it means that we protect one another from unnecessary suffering
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This week, the scribblers at Breitbart got their Jockeys in a bunch over the South Carolina flag controversy. In a brazenly duplicitous display of false equivalence, and transparent attempt to deflect attention away from a symbol of right-wing White American privilege and the political party most closely associated with that demographic, they lay siege on what they characterized as the equivalent of the Nazi Swastika, a rainbow flag. And thousands of their readers applauded these sentiments:
“Under the banner of what is dishonestly called a gay pride or gay ‘rights’ flag, hate, fascism, and intolerance has festered for years, specifically against Christians and conservatives. Under the auspices of a ‘rights and equality’ symbol, Leftists have been on a rampage to take way the rights of others through bullying, lies, and online terrorism. The list of misdeeds and victims resulting from an increasingly emboldened Big Gay Hate Machine continues to grow.
“Under this banner of hate, people are outed against their will, terrorized out of business merely for being Christian, bullied and harassed for thought crimes; moreover, ‘hate crimes’ are being manufactured to keep us divided, Christians are refused service, death threats are hurled, and Christianity is regularly smeared as hate speech.”
Balderdash. I know that the gay flag is none of those things. Contrary to the Breitbart rant, under this banner, in my mind, hypocrites in positions of authority who undermine the gay community are outed because they are hypocrites; discriminatory religious business owners are fined when they violate local ordinances prohibiting discrimination, and hate crime laws are devised which apportion punishment for wrongdoing targeting minorities. Meanwhile, Christians are protected in the everyday practice of their religion by the First Amendment and, in fact, given tax benefits unavailable to other citizens. And the only punishment the hate mongers face nowadays in society is that they are stigmatized as bigots. “Under this banner” we demand equality in housing, the work place and the marketplace...an equality often taken for granted by the majority.
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Teddy is not ready to raise my rainbow flag in our community yet. The unknown, unidentified, but absolutely real crazy relatives of Dylann Roof are still a palpable threat to him. For while we are loved and embraced by so the overwhelming majority of our neighbors, a southern gay is not free from the threat of bigotry any more than are our Black neighbors on the other side of the railroad spur in our little burg.
But let there be no mistake. There are two flags moving in opposite directions on their staffs in today’s South. One is ascending and the other descending. And they are not to be equated. The one that is on the rise stands for the love and affection of soul mates like my spouse and myself, and the promise of equality for minorities of all stripes. On the other hand, the descending stars and bars, contrary to what its defenders say, stands for a heritage of hate or, at the very least, a profound insensitivity for the feelings of our Black community. The day will come when only one of these cloths will wave in the steamy southern breeze. The day is not yet here. It will not be the day when the Supreme Court rules. On that day, my rainbow flag will remain in an unceremonious heap on the bedroom floor, where it was left when Teddy put his foot down Still, that day is coming. It cannot come soon enough.
