| 2/21/2000
The storm before the rainbow
Ronnie Polaneczky
For those who’ve ever doubted e power
of a small gesture to make a very large statement,
I bring you the story of Kurt Conklin’s
flag.
Conklin is an openly gay man-~ who works at
Penn’s student health center. He lives
in Powelton Village, a neighborhood tied only
with Mount Airy, in my opinion, In its zealously
lefty tolerance of diversi-ty. The community’s
gracious Victo-rian homes — abutting hardscrab-ble
Mantua to the north, Drexel’s brick-and-glass
buildings to the south — house urban pioneers,
frat students, Section 8 tenants and aca-demics
who tread Penn and Drexel campuses.
It’s a gritty, bracing community whose
homeowners work hard to keep it beautiful and
livable.
Conklin did his part by proudly flying a vibrantly
hued rainbow flag — long a symbol of gay
pride — in front of his home.
This didn’t sit well with a handful of
drunken college students who made it a routine
mission to tear down Conklin’s flag and
yell homophobic slurs at his house at 2 a.m.,
when they stumbled out of the bar next door.
Conklin replaced the flag three times. Three
times it was ripped away.
The taunts got bolder, accompanied by urination
on his steps. Conklin was starting to feel alarmed
that some awful people might destroy his neighborhood’s
lovely sense of civility.
Conklin mentioned his flag problem to his pastor
and fellow Powelton neighbor, Patricia Pearce.
She im-mediately recalled the story of a Midwest
town whose lone Jewish family was targeted with
violence alter they placed a menorah in their
window. The family’s non-Jewish neighbors
rallied by placing menoraha in their own windows,
and the violence stopped.
Pearce, who’s straight, called her landlord
and neighbor, Betty Baumann, to ask permis-sion
to hang a rainbow flag in her window. Was It
OK with Baumann? OK?
Baumann said it wasn’t OK enough. Why
shouldn’t they let everyone in Powelton
know what was going on, and invite neighbors
to hang their own rainbow flags —not necessarily
as a symbol of.gay pride but of the neighborhood’s
tol-erance for diversity.
Within weeks, 30 households had purchased flags,
bought at cost by neighborhood resident Ed Her-mance,
owner of Giovanni’s Room, the city’s
landmark gay Bookstore, and sold through the
Community Education Center.
The result was like a gay version of “Where’s
Waldo?” If homophobic losers wanted to
harass gay residents, they were first go-ing
to have to determine who was gay and who wasn’t.
“It was wonderful,” says Conklin,
who eventually was able to identify some of
the offending students and in December was working
with their national frat leaders and with Drexel
to find ways to teach students about di-versity
— or, at least; that their intolerance
won’t be tol-erated. “It showed
me, all over again, why I love living in this
neighborhood.”
This is where I’d hoped the story would
end happily. But homophobia can be stronger
than a neighborhood’s lovely gesture.
The new flags are being ripped off at an alarming
rate, says Hermance, and two weeks ago, the
intensity of intimidation increased. A stolen
flag was found on the sidewalk, charred. Its
matching half — which had been urinated
upon — was found decorated with slogans
like “kill gays” and “dykes
and faggots burn in hell.”
“In the past;” Hermance says, “the
flag-ripping could be dismissed as mere vandalism.
Now, though, the writ-ten words have given us
hard evidence that this is a hate crime. It’s
getting ugly.”
with the Powelton Village Civic Association
and with Drexel officials, whom the association
says have not done enough to help the neighborhood
deal with the in-timidation they feel certain
is being perpetrated by Drexel students. The
university has said there is no evi-dence Drexel
students are involved.
“Maybe the commission can help straighten
this out;” says Hermance. “but it’s
slow going. I just don’t want this to
escalate to something terrible before we can
go back to being the wonderful, tolerant neighborhood
we all treasure.”
Here’s to the flags of Powelton. Forever
in peace may they wave.
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