Gay pride flags near me
He says that one can’t help but like the family. “It broke my heart, because you hate to see this kind of thing happen in your community.” “In today’s era you never know how a community is going to react to anything,” Johnson tells The Advocate. “It’s been really amazing having the support of the community like this and meeting new friends along the way,” Garner says.Ĭorsicana Police Chief Robert Johnson says the positive way the community has embraced the family gives him chills. Residents have come to meet the couple and their family, and some have donated or displayed rainbow flags. “And even though some people here don’t agree, they’re still supportive.” “The overwhelming show of support makes me proud to live in this town,” she says. Unlike many conservative areas, Hale says, her town is accepting of LGBTQ+ people. “This isn’t what our community truly is, and I made the post,” she says. She is frustrated by the incident’s negative message about the town. “It was a big change for me to go from being mad to trying to use this as a learning opportunity the way Keith and Terry want it to be,” Hale says. Hale admits her impulse was to be mad, but the family’s insistence on love changed her perspective. It will be given as a reward for information that leads to arrests. Hale says residents donated more than $1,300. Many were ashamed of their town and offered ways to support the family, with some opening their wallets. Burning their pride flags on their front doorstep?!?!” Nearly 1,000 people shared, liked, and commented on the post.Ī lot of other locals are enraged at the display of such hatred. “This happened at my friends’ house last night while they were out of town. “Corsicana, WE are better than this,” she wrote, outraged. the following day, when Garner received a call from Corsicana 911, telling him they needed to connect him with a police officer.Īfter the officer informed the family that someone had burned their Pride flags, they decided to return home. But their holiday ended when shortly before 5 a.m. “So we found one for the leather guys, one for lesbians, one for trans, one for twinks,” he says, “and the new Pride flag is in the middle.”Īfter decorating the house on June 1, they took a short vacation to a water park with Gabriella just a few hours away. The couple wanted to represent the entire LGBTQ+ community in this year’s rainbow colors. Last year, when Gabriella asked for rainbow colors (she’s just a girl who likes rainbows), the dads ordered “everything under the rainbow,” Garner tells The Advocate. “So we’ve ordered and flown banners for Beto or Joe Biden and Kamala Harris or ‘Her Body, Her Choice.’”
“We moved here from New Orleans, where people use their balconies in many different ways,” Garner says. Though they had never flown a Pride flag together, he says they frequently decorate their balcony with political messages. Garner says heads turned when people saw the couple holding hands with their 8-year-old daughter when they moved to the town four years ago. They knew being gay would raise eyebrows. However, the couple wanted to give their youngest daughter, Gabriella, all the benefits of growing up in a small town. Keith Dowler, 51, and Terry Garner, 54, knew they had to make trade-offs to live in Corsicana and commute to Dallas. But, as the family refuses to give up, the rural community is showing them great kindness, and the police chief is devoting significant resources to finding the perpetrator. Someone set fire to several rainbow flags on the family’s property near Dallas on June 2. In Texas, a small town is rallying around a gay couple and their daughter following vandalism to their home during Pride Month.