I have two general areas I want to talk about. One is about rainbow flags. I was married for many years to an FTM man. We were perceived as straight by everyone we knew outside our families. That perception of me is pretty intact today, so I hear what straight people have to say uncensored. I was at a fair in Michigan with a straight friend of mine. I noticed she had a rainbow sticker on her car. I asked her if a gay friend of hers had given it to her. She looked at me like "hunh?" (She seemed to have no idea at all that the rainbow flag was a gay symbol) Then she said it was a sticker form a Christian group she belonged to. Also two other times I have seen rainbow decos on cars and when I looked at them close they were for Jesse Jackson's rainbow coalition (which does include gays, but is not a gay group.) Then also one of my neighbors was flying a big decorative rainbow flag, but under it was a little leprecaun with a pot of gold, lol
Anyway the point is many to most straight folks do not associate the rainbow with gay issues. We agonize over everything we do, we worry, we are afraid (and I totally include myself in that group), but if you had any idea how seldom straight people ever have a thought about gay people, you wouldn't worry so much.)
The other part of this is a hate crime that was directed at me and my husband about 17-18 years ago. I tried to find a link for this but was unsuccesssful, but this is how it began. A lesbian couple was murdered by a neighbor because they put up a fence between his propery and theirs after years of bad feelings between they and he. He shot them both at fairly close range with a shotgun. It was in the news for weeks and as I remember, the guy committed suicide a while later.
Well we were having a property line dispute with our neighbors a few counties away. We had moved, so we were not at that house all the time, but we were keeping it because it was a waterfront property. One weekend we went out there and found a note pinned to our door. In the envelope (anonymous, of course) was an article with big bold headlines that read. "Lesbian lovers mudered over property dispute."
We took it very seriously and so did the police when we called them. They interviewed all our neighbors and warned them to stay away from us. The guy we were pretty sure did it came over to talk to us saying he didn't do it. (To this day he still has never come to understand the phrase, "get off my property" - gee I got that when I was five or six. Thought most folks did.) I told him I didn't believe him, that he had harrased us for years, but that he should be careful from now on because now the police were aware of what he had been doing. He continued to be a pain in the @#%, but we were never attacked in any other than a verbal way. Both hubby and I were pretty good with our mouths too, so we didn't take it lying down, but it did make it unpleasant to go to that house.
I join with others in saying, Live your life as much as possible as you wish to live it, but protect yourself. These crimes tear at our guts. I am so sorry for your pain. Just be careful in this time of stress and anger that you don't expose yourself in ways you will regret later.
Many hugs and smooches,
Keri
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