I have a bone to pick with the LGBTQ+ community. I wouldn't go so far as to say I'm mad at the group as a whole, but I definitely have beef.

Anyone who has read anything on this blog knows this isn't about sex or gender at all. Whatever LGBTQ+ people do with their bodies is as beautiful or disgusting as the shit straights do with theirs. Live loud, live proud. Go you. . . like . . . as a group.


My problem is that y'all co-opted the god damn rainbow. You just took, like, all the colors. Somehow water vapor reflecting light at just the right angle is now considered the Mecca of gay. As in, "Hey dude, look how beautiful the sky is right now! It's gay as hell out!" It's gotten to the point where if you were to take a bunch of school kids to see Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, most would leave the theater being all, "I never realized the liberator of the Jews was gay until NOW! I mean . . . did you SEE that coat?!?"

*Quick tangent* While out on a boat recently with my male friend, we saw a complete double rainbow, including the four pots of gold at each terminus. We declared that if a dolphin were to leap from the water, in all its pinwheeling glory, at that exact time, we would officially be married according to the bylaws of obviousness. We waited with  . . . ahem . . . baited breath . . . but Flipper never flipped. *End tangent*

And, it is here I also must concede, co-opting the rainbow was a genius move by the greater gay community. I mean all those people with hate in their hearts and businesses they just can't mind, can now scream, "I hate that flag!," instead of the more vile alternative. On another level, you also get homophobes to avoid wearing multiple colors to avoid being mistaken as gay, literally making their lives less colorful - which I find, both linguistically and karmicly, incredibly satisfying.

"But what about me!," cried the White male author, fully realizing the irony of his own privilege in his insistent self-focus. I LOVE color. Hell, my wedding suit was technicolor, half of my shoes feature every color in the rainbow, and the only black clothes in my wardrobe are long johns and a t-shirt I won at a bar for coming in first in a foosball tournament (My randomly selected partner was next level good. Like, ranked at foosball good. It was how I realized that foosball players could have rankings. I pretty much played goalie with both hands. That is not a euphemism.)

Aforementioned Wedding Suit (yes we have the reverse shot)

Groom and Groomsmen Shoes/Socks

So I'm a walking rainbow and somehow that makes appear gay? That's crazy. Don't get me wrong, as an aging married man I take any person that finds me attractive, regardless of sex or gender identity, as a gift. I have no issue being mistaken as gay, my problem is I want my experience of color desexualized! I just want to walk down the street wearing a bright orange suit, yellow shirt, red tie, purple pants, green shoes, and blue socks, and have passerby's declare, "There goes a beautiful crazy person with too much expendable income!" Not, "there goes that beautiful man loving man of a crazy person with too much expendable income!" Color me old-timey, but I want my chaste experience of color back, unfettered by all these layers of social meaning.

As I write those words I feel like I need a wooden cane to shake in the air, while I scream at no one in particular, "Get your unique and important experience of your own sexuality off my color wheel!" And, if I scream about it enough, and I scream it loud enough, I'll probably get my wish of being seen as simply a crazy person with too much expendable income, because no LGBTQ+ person would be caught dead acting so unbelievably gauche.