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Closet Signs
October 07, 2005
A station wagon parked in a driveway up the street this morning carried a discreet square sticker on its rear bumper: two horizontal yellow bars on a navy blue background. Equality sign, I thought, putting 2 + 2 together: the neighbor to whom the driveway belongs is a lesbian, though I'd never seen the car before. Gay rights, or gays are equal too, or maybe even lesbians are equal too. Signs and T-shirts and organizations supporting gay rights tend to be subtle. The organizations favor names like "Human Rights Campaign Fund" and "Lambda Legal Defense Fund," probably to that people can write checks and mail them without their bankers and their postal clerks knowing they're gay symps or (gods forbid) gay themselves. The bumper stickers incline to lambdas and rainbows and pink triangles and equal signs: these identify you to sister and brother symps without provoking the possibly hostile to slash your tires.
People with yellow "support our troops" ribbons on the backs of their cars don't seem to consider that possibility. Possibly they don't realize that anyone is driven to teeth-gnashing rage or hand-clenching despair by their yellow ribbons? Or maybe they have a higher opinion of their opponents than many lesbian and gay rights activists have of ours?
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