There's No Place Like Homophobia

I love this story. A nice couple opens a bed and breakfast in a small town in Kansas. On a trip to Dorothy's House, a museum in nearby Liberal, Kansas dedicated to the Wizard Of Oz, their twelve-year-old son buys them a rainbow flag. They put it up outside their inn.

The yawning gates of hell proceed to open beneath them.

The local newspaper runs an article on the "gay" flag. They never even bother to contact the inn's owners, a lovely couple named J.R. and Robin Knight. The local radio station threatens to pull the ads for their restaurant. A town preacher confronts them over the flag, proclaiming that the flag is the equivalent of flying women's underwear from their flagpole. When J.R. Knight jokes that maybe he will do that next, the preacher threatens to have him arrested.

And then there is this moron:

Local resident, Keith Klassen says the flag is a slap in the face to the conservative community of Meade. “To me it's just like running up a Nazi flag in a Jewish neighborhood. I can't walk into that establishment with that flag flying because to me that's saying that I support what the flag stands for and I don't," says Klassen.

As this commenter on the Stranger blog sarcastically put it:

My conservative aunt and uncles survived the "Great Kansas Purge" of 1974, when gay thugs rounded up the decent, God-fearing Americans, and sent them to the camps.
We Will Never Forget!

Of course, this all ended as you suspected, when someone cut the flag down. But never fear. The Knights, though breeders, are cool as hell. They ain't backing down:

Said Knight: Any gay or lesbian people that do stop by will be treated with the best service I can give you. When this rainbow flag shreds, I will buy another one, and another one, and another one - just like my American flag, I'll buy another one."

Queers who heard about this over the blogs are rushing to support them by booking rooms at their inn, rooms they may never use, to thank them for what thay are doing, standing up for others, even though it's not "their" fight.

Finally, something that's not the matter with Kansas.

Thanks to Towleroad for the heads-up.