Over the rainbow.

The Hotline section of our local paper has been all abuzz this past two weeks with submissions regarding a LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) pride group that apparently participated in the local Fourth of July parade.

For the uninitiated, the Hotline is a forum for reader’s comments in our local paper – a coherent thought process bringing an idea or an opinion to any semblance of a logical conclusion NOT a prerequisite for publication.  Nor is a name.  The result is an often hilarious yet equally unsettling amalgam of sketchy facts and patriotic fervor mixed with homicidal rage against the “other” – like Wikipedia if members of Congress were the only ones allowed to make edits.

Oh – and the occasional thank you for the kind stranger who returned a wallet or helped with a flat tire. But mostly homicidal rage.

For many members of the community it seems the inclusion of a LGBT group in this year’s parade was big news, as was reflected in the overwhelming number of Hotline submissions for which the apparent gay, liberal, traditional family-destroying agenda descending on Fenton was the critical issue.

Of which my husband and I were unaware.

While we did not have the chance to attend the parade, our eighteen year-old son and a group of his friends roused themselves before ten and walked downtown to watch the festivities.

And, shockingly enough, despite the tenor of this past week’s Hotlines, neither my son nor his friends came home covered in any telltale signs of the coming gaypocalypse.  Granted, I’m not sure what those signs might be but the boys weren’t covered in glitter or quoting from Howl http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15308, so they seemed to have escaped unscathed.

In fact, so non-plussed were they by the apparent demise of all values for which this country stands, as evidenced by a minority group brazenly exercising their civil right to free speech through participation in a public celebration of a nation founded on the premise that all men are created equal, that they DIDN’T EVEN MENTION IT.

So when my husband and I read this week’s paper and realized that we were the last ones to see the LGBT forest through the rainbow-colored trees, we were naturally curious as to what had transpired during the parade.  So we asked our son what happened.

To which he replied, “No big deal.  Just a bunch of people walking and waving with their families.”

Walking and waving with their families – as if they love their country and each other, value their families, work hard and pay taxes, support the local economy with their hard-earned dollars, educate their children in local schools, shop at Walmart (who doesn’t love cheap cereal?) and overeat on holidays as much as any other red-blooded American in town.

Subversive.

Next thing you know they’ll demand all their rights as afforded them by the U.S. Constitution and equal treatment under the law.

Then the whole meaning of the Fourth of July will be lost.