A New Documentary.

A new trans documentary is coming out and the Washington Post writes...

LGBTQ+ Americans fight for the American flag in a new documentary

To reject the flag is, in some ways, akin to rejecting part of oneself. What does it mean when so many Americans have let the flag go?

by Robin Givhan

July  16, 2025

In the early minutes of the short documentary “Reclaim the Flag,” actor and writer Lena Waithe rests her head in her hand and takes a few moments to consider the small American flag that she’s been handed and that now rests in her lap.

“If you’re a person that feels like you belong, that you’ve been embraced, then you’ll wave it with pride,” she said. “If you feel like your people have been killed, wronged, been able to be seen as less than human under the flag, you’re going to be triggered by it. But yet still be born under it.”

“And that is really the plight, the existence, of being someone who’s seen as a ‘less than’ in a country that you were born into.”

Waithe lays this out in a tone that’s matter-of-fact. She doesn’t say it with dismay or frustration. There’s a hint of sadness, but only a hint. This is the state of her relationship with the American flag. For a lot of people, that relationship requires holding many conflicting thoughts and emotions at once. But it is those very complications, the awful truths as well as the exhilarating possibilities, that may well make their stubborn attachment to the flag exceptionally profound.

I don't hate the flag, I don't like the people who wrap themselves in it... in the "I am holier than you" mentality.

They’ve watched as some on the right, and the far right, have hoisted the flag high, loudly pledged their allegiance to it and waved it with riotous vigor — alongside a flag celebrating President Donald Trump. They’ve seen it used as a rallying cry for an insurrection, as a pictogram for mass deportations, as a muzzle on self-expression.

You just can't have an American flag on stage... but as many as you can fit wall-to-wall to show that I am more patriot than you! At the bottom of the Statue of Liberty is written...

"Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!". 

Now the Republicans are going; um... ah.. "your poor"? Well, um... "huddled masses yearning to breathe free" Well I err... I don't think we want those here. How about we change it "Give us your rich White folk... Your  masses yearning to buy McMansions! You know, those people you used to call Yuppies!

The Times article ends with,

“This is our country, too. And we believe in the ideals of America even though it hasn’t always lived up to that. And we’re not ready to throw in the towel or to give up the flag as a symbol,” he said. “But it became increasingly harder after the election because we realized that so many people driving by are making assumptions” about their politics.

“The dream of this film is that we get people to start thinking about the flag,” Cohen added. “And to start wanting to display the flag.”

For me patriotism is earned.