For the past two years around Remembrance Day I have found myself extremely upset and frustrated at the relentless sharing of the rainbow poppy on social media. If you have been fortunate enough to have not come across the stupid creation, then here it is.
This is an eBay listing from a random person in 2019 who decided to create a rainbow poppy for whatever reason. The person who listed this item for sale told trolls that they were not even part of the LGBT community. The intentions of the product are not clear from the seller, however it did not take long for patriots to jump on Twitter and Facebook expressing their disgust towards LGBT people for making Remembrance Day about them. I feel like screaming at the top of my lungs that the gay community did not ask for this, nor do we claim it. It seems to me that this is only fuelling anti-lgbt agenda. It gives people an opportunity to publish their homophobic agenda online.
No where in the eBay listing does it state that this poppy is for all the LGBT people who helped with the war efforts. In fact, it doesn’t even mention LGBT at all – that was somebody else entirely. Somebody who wanted to cause uproar that the gay community could disrespect Britain’s most prized icon, the poppy. It seems that whoever made this pin badge had no idea of the consequences – at least I hope they didn’t. As when things like this go viral, hate crimes towards gay people become more common; violence and abuse becomes rife. It was reported by PinkNews that the seller deactivated their account after receiving ‘vile’ messages.
Although being gay is so much easier now than it has previously been, I constantly feel like I’m treading on eggshells, just waiting for the next thing to make people hate us. One minute it’s ‘Yaaaass queen’ and the next it’s ‘why can’t we have a straight pride?’ I constantly fear things like this god damn rainbow poppy because it gets people so riled up that you never actually know what they are capable of. The poppy has such huge significance among the Brits and many people have stories close their hearts; some have family who served in the war. So when they hear that the gays are at it again trying to be PC and make everything about them, it terrifies me.
One of the things that deeply upsets and actually disturbs me is some of the comments regarding gay people and being gay’s comparison with fighting in a war. A comparison which simply doesn’t exist. I saw a comment from someone on Facebook which read ‘our soldiers weren’t crying about being gay or having 52 genders, they were watching their best friends die’. Which while horrific, is not something which really correlates with a struggle with one’s sexuality or gender.
What I cannot understand about people is that it’s always ‘be kind’ until it’s time to jump on the bandwagon, hating a community that never asked for a rainbow poppy. Please do not let something you saw on the internet fuel your hatred towards gay people. We do not claim the rainbow poppy, we respect the sacrifices of those soldiers.
the female says 