Martha-Ann Alito, who’s married to Justice Samuel Alito, has admitted that she flies politicized flags exterior her houses as a result of she will be able to’t stand the colours of the rainbow.
“I need a Sacred Coronary heart of Jesus flag,” she advised a girl posing as a Catholic conservative, “as a result of I’ve to look throughout the lagoon on the Satisfaction flag for the following month.” Tellingly, within the surreptitiously recorded dialog, she even fantasized about creating her personal fiery flag with the phrase “vergogna” (“disgrace” in Italian) so she may say to her neighbors, “Disgrace, disgrace, disgrace, on you.”
Apparently, for Ms. Alito, the second nice commandment, to like thy neighbor, applies solely till the neighbor is proud sufficient to sport rainbows. Then vergogna!
To be sincere, these feedback aren’t notably stunning. Ms. Alito is the spouse of a justice who agreed that the nation must return to “a spot of godliness” and has argued that the court docket’s ruling on marriage equality restricts the free speech rights of spiritual conservatives. (If that’s actually true, anyone ought to inform her to zip it earlier than she’s jailed for her phrases.)
They’re additionally emblematic of a broader marketing campaign by the non secular proper to erase or disgrace queer tradition from public view, usually within the type of tried — and profitable — bans on books, flags, drag performances and curriculums. The one factor mildly revealing about Ms. Alito’s feedback is that they sign it’s nonetheless socially acceptable for non secular conservatives to demean the queer neighborhood in supposedly well mannered firm.
Whereas it’s undeniably exhausting that anti-L.G.B.T.Q. sentiments proceed to contaminate members of America’s strongest establishments, queer individuals ought to take coronary heart that even essentially the most benign of our symbols, the rainbow flag, nonetheless so bothers those that hate us.
In 1978, Gilbert Baker — an activist who was, as he put it, the “homosexual Betsy Ross” — and a bunch of volunteers dyed and stitched the primary rainbow Satisfaction flag within the attic of the Homosexual Group Middle in San Francisco. Whereas the flag has undergone many transformations since, the rainbow has endured as a welcome, if typically clichéd, Satisfaction image.
Because the rainbow has ceaselessly been deployed by firms or “allies” that take little curiosity in L.G.B.T.Q. equality exterior of a boozy June weekend, some queer individuals might imagine it has develop into too watered down to face as a strong image. However predictable outrage, from the Phyllises and Anitas and Martha-Anns, ought to remind even essentially the most cynical of us that our symbols usually converse far louder than we may alone.
Within the face of an increase in makes an attempt to limit cultural expressions of queer identification, the rainbow continues to be among the finest instruments we’ve to collectively repudiate those that want we had been ashamed to be alive. We should wave it proudly.
As for you, Martha-Ann, I say glad Satisfaction Month! I’ll be praying for you.
