Relentlessly Gay

Photo via Reddit (http://www.reddit.com/r/baltimore/comments/3a70nf/relentlessly_gay/)

Instead of retreating, a Baltimore woman is getting revenge on a homophobic neighbor by using their attempt to shame her for her yard as the basis for a successful online fundraiser.

The Baltimore Sun reported that 47-year-old Julie Baker started the campaign after finding a note inside her door criticizing her for the multi-color solar lights on her front yard, which spell out the words “love” and “ohana.” The latter is a Hawaiian expression meaning “family.”

“Your yard is becoming Relentlessly Gay!” the note read. “Myself and Others in the neighborhood ask that you Tone it Down. This is a Christian area and there are Children. Keep it up and I will be forced to call the police on You! Your kind need to have Respect for GOD.”

Baker, who identified herself as bisexual in an interview with Baltimore City Paper, said the lights were not meant as a political statement.

Photo via citypaper.com

“The point of the rainbows isn’t about being gay,” she said. “It’s because we love rainbows. I have a rainbow tattoo on my arm. We’re going to decorate the white siding of our house with them.”

Baker also opened a page on the crowd-funding site GoFundMe seeking $5,000 she said would be used to make her yard “even More ‘relentlessly gay.'”

“Put simply, I am a widow and the mother of four children, my youngest in high school and I WILL NOT Relent to Hatred,” she wrote. “Instead, I will battle it with whimsy and beauty and laughter and love, wrapped around my home, yard and family!!!”

Sigh.  Colourful whimsical ornamentation is all I see here.  Odd thing is, although the woman apparently self-identifies as bi-sexual, which wasn't clear from coverage of the story on many sites, I suspect that she genuinely just wanted something pretty, something positive in a garden, something to bring a smile.

And yet, since the rainbow has been appropriated as a political symbol (not her fault), just as the word 'gay' itself was appropriated, the mere fact of choosing kaleidoscopic colours is immediately interpreted as something political, or as something sexual.

'Gay', like 'queer' (the latter also possessing in its traditional usage the additional bonus of onomatopoeia), is one of the relatively few monosyllabic words in the English language.  And not one in its traditional use that even submits easily to a dictionary-definition.  There's a suggestion of something childlike, something innocent about 'gay'.  It refers to a carefree happiness, a lightness shot through with joy.  It's a beautiful word.

My little wordbook is old enough that it still gives a traditional definition first.  Dictionary.com not only gives the sexual definition for the first and second entries, but has 'Slang: Often Disparaging and Offensive. awkward, stupid, or bad; lame' as its third.  Oxforddictionaries.com tells me that 'the centuries-old other senses of gay meaning either ‘carefree’ or ‘bright and showy’ have more or less dropped out of natural use. The word gay cannot be readily used today in these older senses without arousing a sense of double entendre, despite concerted attempts by some to keep them alive.'

Well count me as one of those who'll try to keep the original spirit of the word alive, world be damned.*  Not that I don't understand the desire for an alternative to 'homosexual' -- It's such an awkward, clinical sounding word -- Just wish there were an alternative to stripping two of the rarest and most beautiful words from the language.

Which is I suppose to say, that while the nosy neighbour was absolutely wrong in assuming the 'relentless gayness' of the garden, it is nonetheless, in my eyes at least, marvellously gay indeed.


* Out of curiosity, I checked this blog for my own usage, and found three instances where I used the word in the modern usage, one of which in quotation-marks.  So not as committed to this as I might want to pretend perhaps.