My friend Anne made me this sequinned bauble in the bi pride colours. It’s fabulously sparkly, particularly on a sunny day like today.
I spent a lot of time this summer looking for something that would say, as unambiguously as these words, ‘here is somebody who is both queer and Christian’, while not being confrontational about it. This was for a context where there were rainbows everywhere – and no way of telling what they meant, or, at least, if they might mean any more than a reference to Genesis 9. I wanted to identify myself as a safe person to ask for clarification, if necessary.
I am not sure that I managed it, but something else interesting happened. I found myself enjoying the ambiguity. I found myself wanting to be more visible. I have been wearing rainbows to church (getting compliments on them, too). I don’t know what other people think they mean, if anything, and I find that I’m not bothered by that.
But a bauble in stripes of pink, purple and blue, sparkling joyously in the afternoon sunlight? That’s for me, and I know exactly what it means, and I love it.
Kathleen Jowitt 