I’m known for being a festive neighbor: I put out inflatable dinosaurs with bunny ears for Easter, a porch lined with pumpkins and tree ghosts for Halloween, and half a dozen inflatables that fill my yard at Christmas. And ever since my ex-partner and I first bought the house I live in, there’s always been a rainbow flag out front. I’m someone whose weirdness is always visible, and I want my home to be the same.
But during June, one long-standing year-round flag just isn’t enough. I have a large plastic dinosaur that lives on my porch and I dress it up for different holidays throughout the year. Last Pride Month, I put a little bouquet of various pride flags in the dinosaur’s mouth: trans pride, non-binary pride, asexual pride, and leather pride among them.
One day, I was going to get the mail, when my neighbor reported me. He walked across his yard and into mine, passing my pride ornament. I assumed he had some neighborly gossip or tidbits about his trees being trimmed to share.
Instead, he said, “I just wanted to tell you how much all your pride flags mean to us, to me.”
He soon told me that his teenager had just come out as transgender. He ran into pronouns, apologized, then explained that my flags helped his child feel safer and more comfortable visiting dad’s house every other weekend. I was shocked. I knew my rainbow flag inspired conversation among neighborhood families as they walked by, but I had no idea that my pride decor was helping at least one young trans person feel safer on my little street.
I came out at 17, when I was kicked out of my home and became part of the LGBTQ+ youth homelessness epidemic in the United States. It is estimated that up to 40% of homeless youth identify as LGBTQ+, and LGBTQ+ people are 120% more likely to experience homelessness than heterosexual/cisgender people.
From the day I got out, I jumped into community organizing. I ran a shelter for LGBTQ+ homeless youth in New York City for many years; amplify queer voices through editing Kicked out, a collection of stories from current and former homeless LGBTQ+ youth; and wrote his novel, Lost Boiwhich was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Fiction in 2015. For me, raising transgender voices isn’t isolated to Transgender Day of Visibility—it’s a commitment I bring to my life, work, and home every day.
Queer visibility is more important now than ever. The ACLU is currently tracking 479 anti-LGBTQ+ laws across the United States, many of which use transphobic rhetoric to censor school curriculums, limit access to gender-affirming health care, place limits on gay shows and other legislative attempts to limit or remove transgender and non-binary people from the public sphere. of life. Last month’s tragic death of 16-year-old non-binary teenager Nex Benedict in Oklahoma is the latest news to remind me how violent transphobic legislation and media can embolden people to act violently against our community.
This winter, my original flagpole snapped in an ice storm, and my rainbow flag had to be cut from a frozen gutter. When I ordered a new pole and attached it to the porch, I took it as an excuse to upgrade my traditional rainbow flag to a newer progressive pride flag, which includes black and brown stripes to honor the role that LGBTQ+ people of color have played in creating the modern LGBTQ+ community and the struggle for equality.
Although my neighbor and his family have since moved away, I will always remember how profoundly my visibility had an impact on a dad who just wanted to better understand his child, and how it made my neighborhood feel a little more welcoming to trans youth / non-binary people who are just coming out.
Having been a queer activist for over 20 years, I can sometimes feel cynical about the importance of the small things I do to increase visibility. Hanging a pride flag won’t change the world or stop non-binary kids from facing violence in schools, but it sends a message to your neighborhood that transphobia and homophobia are not welcome in your community. You never know who might feel safer because of that flag you put up.