Kansas is Not Over the Rainbow; Flag Owners Catch Hell From Community

Kansas: not over the rainbow
After rainbow flag is cut down, B&B owner vows to get another and keep flying it.

(See original report here on Friday, July 28)
by Ethan Jaccobs ejacobs@baywindows.com
J.R. and Robin Knight may not be gay, but the Meade, Kansas couple got a small taste of the homophobia directed at LGBT people living in the rural Midwest when they hung up a rainbow banner last month in front of their bed and breakfast. J.R. Knight said the flag was a present from their 12-year-old son, who Knight said is staying with family out in California and sent the flag to his parents as a gift, unaware of its traditional use as a symbol of LGBT pride (fittingly, his son purchased it after visiting the Wizard of Oz-themed museum Dorothy’s House in Kansas as a reminder of the song "Somewhere Over the Rainbow"). Knight said he and his wife knew the flag was a gay pride symbol, but they hung it up because it was colorful and reminded them of their son, not to celebrate gay pride. In the month since the flag went up, the Lakeway Hotel has become a target, with local residents launching an informal boycott of the hotel’s restaurant, one Meade resident comparing the flag to the Nazi flag on the local evening news, and an anonymous vandal tearing the flag to shreds. Knight said he plans to replace the flag, and the local opposition has only made him and his wife more resolute in keeping the flag flying.

"My son’s flag is cut. For all intents and purposes it’s gone," said Knight. "The next flag and the next flag and the next flag are going to be for equal rights for everyone."

At the local level, Knight said few people in Meade, which, with only 1600 residents is about as small as small town gets, have spoken out publicly to defend the Knights’ decision to fly the rainbow flag. He said he and his wife had already made enemies in town in their successful fight to get out of paying debts held by the previous owners of the hotel, which they purchased when they moved to town from Southern California two years ago. The rainbow flag controversy, which has placed Meade in the national spotlight both through attention from national media and from the LGBT blogosphere, has only made things worse, and Knight said business in their once-popular restaurant has been down.

"In this community, everybody is afraid of everything. If somebody is seen coming in here they will boycott their businesses too," said Knight.

Yet the media attention has also brought the Knights support from LGBT people across the country. The couple has received thousands of e-mails supporting their decision to keep up their flag, and Knight said a few people have sent them money equivalent to the cost of renting one of their hotel rooms for a weekend, requesting that they use the money to offer free lodging to gay tourists looking for a room. (Bay Windows publishers Sue O’Connell and Jeff Coakley sent the Knights flowers as a show of support.) The Knights used one of those donations to offer the Southwest chapter of the Kansas Equality Network, the state’s lead LGBT group, a weekend stay in the hotel’s Queen Suite to raffle off as a fundraiser for the organization. Anne Mitchell, chair of the chapter, said the group accepted the offer and will hold the raffle when it holds its upcoming Aug. 13 chapter meeting at the Lakeway Hotel. Mitchell said she had called Robin Knight to show support after learning about the controversy, and Robin extended the invitation to host their meeting at the hotel.

"She expressed more interest in us gaining membership, raising money for our organization, rather than for her benefit," Mitchell said.

Mitchell said that she fears the media attention portraying the people of Meade as anti-gay bigots is presenting a one-sided view of Kansas, although she admitted she has seen no one in the town publicly stand up and defend the Knights.

"These stories are terrible, but there are also great stories," said Mitchell, saying one of the new members of the Kansas City chapter recently took his boyfriend to his high school prom and was welcomed without incident. "Those people who have been quoted in the paper, I would not want them to be speaking for the town of Meade. I want others to speak up."

Knight places much of the blame for the controversy on the local paper, the Meade County News, and its editor, Denice Kuhns. He said when he and his wife first put up the flag it attracted little attention, but a few days later he said the paper published a photo of the flag and directed people to a Web site explaining the history of the flag as a symbol of LGBT pride. That photo prompted local residents to demand that Knight take down the flag, including a retired Nazarene minister who Knight said threatened to stage a boycott of the hotel and restaurant.

"[Kuhns] was trying to put me out of business with this thing," said Knight.

Bay Windows contacted Kuhns to comment for this story, but when reached by phone she said "No comment" and hung up on this reporter.

Since the photo was first published in the Meade County News public sentiment in the town has turned sharply against the Knights. Knight said local business in the restaurant is noticeably down since the story broke. One local resident, Keith Klassen, told Wichita’s KWCH-12 news that the flag was an affront to the town’s conservative values.

"To me, it’s just like running up a Nazi flag in a Jewish neighborhood," Klassen told KWCH-12. "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."

The local Christian radio station, KJIL, dropped the Lakeway Hotel as one of its official business supporters. Prior to the rainbow flag flap the hotel had offered up its restaurant to the station as a space to hold its staff meetings, and in return the station plugged the hotel on the air. Knight said after word spread through the media about the flag the station’s general manager, Don Hughes, called him up and demanded he take the flag down.

"He said, ‘That flag out there is gay and it stands for gay rights’ … He said, ‘You either take it down or we’re going to have to pull your spots,’" said Knight, who said when he declined to take down the flag the Lakeview Inn was dropped from the spots.

Gabriel Hughes, the station’s mid-day personality and assistant production director, as well as Don Hughes’s son, said his father was unavailable for comment, but he said the station never threatened the hotel with pulling its spots. Hughes said the agreement between the station and Lakeview Inn had expired, and the station chose not to renew it.

"When the flag went up our agreement with them had actually come to an end when that whole controversy started. When that happened, my dad … had just kind of said, ‘Why don’t we just go ahead and terminate the arrangement, and all the controversy has started, why don’t we end it here?’" said Hughes. He declined to say whether the station objected to the rainbow flag and its pro-gay message.

Knight said he and his wife never expected to become gay activists, but Knight said he’s seen several people in his life struggle with being gay and coming out. Four friends of his from back in his high school days, including the best man at his wedding to his first wife, were gay and died of AIDS while still in their 20s, although Knight said only one felt comfortable enough to talk with him about being openly gay. He also said while in high school he served as a peer counselor, and he said many of the students he counseled at the time were teens struggling with being gay. More recently Knight said friends of the couple have recently discovered that their son is gay, and the Knights have urged the couple to accept their son.

Knight said while he did not originally intend the flag as a gay pride statement, he is glad that it has made LGBT people see the inn as a welcoming place. The same day the flag went up, before it become a national story, a lesbian couple traveling cross-country took the flag as the sign that the Inn would be a welcoming place in a state where voters passed a marriage amendment by a wide margin last year.

"We gave them dinner, we gave them breakfast, and we gave them a little refuge … That was cool. At least they found a place that looked somewhat more inviting than the rest," said Knight.

He said he and his wife have been thankful for the support they have received, but given the anger stirred up by their decision just to fly the rainbow flag, he believes their courage pales compared to the courage of gay and lesbian people who come out at the risk of losing support from their family and community.

"I can’t imagine what that’s like, to have your whole family shun you because you’re attracted to a guy. And for them to call me brave for flying a flag is just incredible," said Knight.

My best wishes to the Knight family as they stumble into the fight for gay rights; a fight they did not ask for but seem to have gotten dragged into. PAT