Barrel Strength

Some time ago I was walking through Vancouver’s West End a few streets east of Denman, in the heart of the village bounded by Burrard St. to the east, Stanley Park to the west, English Bay to the south, and Burrard Inlet to the north. As I walked by the playground of a public school, I heard the screams and cries of children playing. I thought it fine that so densely urban a place as the west end would still have a playground full of children. Then I noticed the flag flying over the school yard.

It was the rainbow flag of gay.

I took several pictures of this flag, but never was able to capture it at full extension when the shutter clicked.

Now, am I the only one who finds it not merely ironic to have the flag of gay flying over the playground, but deeply wrong? I cannot exactly describe why I find it wrong, but my first and remaining reaction to this flag flying in that place (and not elsewhere) was that this was wrong. Oh, and let me say that I was walking back to the apartment of a gay male friend of mine, who had lent me his place to stay. My reaction was to the oddness of flying a flag of a political sexual movement celebrating homosexuality over a schoolyard, full of children generated by heterosexual activity.

Yes, I am aware that several children in that playground may have a gay parent. But children are the result of heterosexual intercourse, to state the obvious.  What do children learn when they finally notice that the flag flying over their schoolyard is not the flag of Canada but the flag of a sexual orientation? Of course, it could well be that they are not supposed to notice anything, that the flag was flying there to show the adults how gay-friendly the school is.

Maybe the flag was supposed to be recalled long afterward by the children of this playground, to remind them they grew up in a gay-friendly neighbourhood. My suspicion is rathermore cynical. From their earliest memories of playing in the schoolyard, they will have been indoctrinated that this is normal. What is this to which I refer? Not to homosexuality, but to politicized sexuality. Not just that gay is normal, but that politicized sexual choice is normal.

What is at issue here is not that some people are gay, including possibly some parents of kids in that school. Rather, it is that the political forces that run the school want children to learn, long before any of them have the least idea of the mechanics of sexual reproduction,  that  gay is what? – the country they belong to? normal? their environment?

When we were growing up, and well before puberty, we knew which teachers we had were homos,  as they were then known, even though we were utterly clueless as to the biological facts of life. We made no judgment about those teachers, other than the obvious fact that they were gay, as they later began to be called. Their nature was as clear to us as the wooden leg of one of the veterans, or the harelip of the Latin teacher, even though we had no actual knowledge of sexuality, straight or gay. Young boys call each other fags before they have any clue about who does what to whom, and in what orifices. It is just how it is. But the flag that flew over our school was the school flag. This was the place to which we belonged.

The  flag of gay flying over the schoolyard must be intended to convey some message. But what message? That the kids belong to the gay place? I would love to conduct an interview of the school administration to ascertain their motives. I am not sure I would find satisfactory answers.