The Good Old Days

As I sit here in space number 72 of the Happy Travelers RV Park looking out the front window onto an amazing landscape of palm trees and jagged mountain peaks, I can see two multicolored flags flying over two separate sites down the road. And if I bend my neck around the corner, there are two more. I wonder why they feel the need to demonstrate their gayness. I don't understand gayness. Then again, I don't understand women and I have lived under the same roof with one or more for most of my life.

At an Italian restaurant the other night, two men and a woman sat across from us and we engaged in a friendly, free flow conversation for a few minutes. Connie speaks to everyone. And it is the rare person who does not return her smile or her happy chatter. I have coached her gently on this specifically following an occasion where she invited a mentally unstable, homeless man to join us for coffee and breakfast sandwiches. She said she didn't notice his ragged suitcase or his strong unwashed aroma. "He was all alone..." It's part of her charm. Anyhow... One of the men wanted to make sure we understood that he and the other guy were a couple. He told us proudly that they had been together for 32 years.

John and Dave were the spark plugs of the RV park last year, two professional business people who had been together for 22 years and now lived in a $500,000, deluxe, 40 foot land yacht with marble counters and wide screen plasma TV's. They were always bicycling around the park, playing cards at the pool or throwing dinner parties in the evening. They watched out for Connie last year when I had to dash back to Maine with Ryan's surgeries. The unofficial social directors of this community. The residents of Happy Travelers whispered sadly about their breakup this winter just before our arrival.

So why do intelligent men in long standing, loving relationships feel the need to fly a rainbow flag? Clearly it is not to flaunt their lifestyle or to advertise for sexual partners. Perhaps they are demonstrating fearlessness.

I remember well the days when some of the kitchen crew at Howard Johnson's, where I was a dishwasher, would tell stories about "bashing fags" at Old Orchard Beach. They thought it was good sport to isolate and intimidate homosexuals, perfectly justifiable. They were "disgusting"... "queers".

Gays suffered widespread discrimination in housing, in employment. And with the AIDS virus, many God fearing Christians claimed divine retribution. It's not just the Christians. I read a report recently of homosexual executions in the Muslim world, sanctioned by the mullahs, a holy Jihad against homosexuals.

When a class of people are brutalized by society for who they are, who they can not help but be, they can cower and be wiped of the face of the earth. Or they can stand up and defy the tyranny. Nations and races of people celebrate their courage throughout history in standing up to brutality. They fly their flags proudly with slogans like "Never again" and "Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last."

Is the brightly colored windsock blowing in the 100 degree breeze across the way any different? Is it not a badge of courage, telling anyone who cares to listen that they are proud to have survived the centuries where societies tried to eliminate them and that, at least in this society, they will never allow things to return to "the good old days".

I will never understand what it is to be gay. But I recognize fearlessness... a decision to demonstrate courage in spite of feeling afraid... that I understand. And admire.