Ran across a story from Seattle this morning about a lesbian couple being asked to stop kissing at a baseball game because their smooches were making someone uncomfortable. I thought back to an experience in Savannah about 15 years ago when I was in the hotel lobby gift shop of a Hyatt or Hilton with a colleague from the Council of State Governments. We were picking up gum or some such thing, and as we paid an inter-racial couple walked past the window holding hands. The clerk muttered under her breath, "just makes you want to go get a gun." I don't think she thought anyone could hear her, but my colleague did and said to me, "can you believe what she just said?"
We were appalled, but not terribly surprised. It was, after all, Savannah, circa 1990, and the remark was uttered by an older white woman who, considering where she worked, was probably not particularly worldly or well educated.
But Seattle? 2008? You'd think folks there might be a little less concerned about a kiss.
Apparently the "incident" has stirred up the blogosphere there (and here, obviously). I wonder if there were any random acts of senseless violence in Seattle that night. Probably so. They seem to happen. And we don't get too stirred up. But a random act of love? Well, that's something to boil the blood apparently.
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I remember that Hilton. Where the security guards followed Terry and me all around as we looked for you, because we were dangerously scruffy looking. . .times do change, but scruffy people still arouse suspicion, maybe more so than interracial couples these days, I dunno.
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