A true flag is not something you can really design. A true flag is torn from the soul of the people. A flag is something that everyone owns, and that’s why they work. -Glibert Baker, creator of the rainbow Pride flag

All the hate I was seeing this morning in the news about Pride at the last Giant’s game isn’t helping my mood or my energy levels, which are pathetic as a baseline now anyway.

I’ve been in this struggle since I came out to myself in the early 1970s, and I’m practically a connoisseur of all the shifty, tactically evasive little ways hatemongers spit in our faces and excuse themselves as only having an opinion, or just following the bible, or citing some junk science from the likes of Paul Cameron. This year they, or more likely some well paid right wing propaganda mill, came up with a couple new ones.

Red state governors and local mayors are proclaiming Faith And Family month as a pushback to Pride. But those four Giants pitchers were showcasing another one that’ll probably spread around. On their Pride event caps, which they could have chosen not to wear, they scrawled Genesis 9:12-16. It’s trending on Google search now…for some reason…so you can easily look it up.

It’s a neat trick. Instead of throwing Leviticus or Paul at us, they’re simply quoting the only passage in the bible where the rainbow is mentioned. This allows them to deflect accusations of being motivated by prejudice because the verses say nothing about homosexuality directly. You can’t have your rainbow because it belongs to God.

One of the pitchers, Landon Roupp said of writing the inscription on the Pride event cap that “…the rainbow is a symbol of God’s covenant to us, and us as believers to stand firm in that. … There’s no hate at all. It’s just what I stand for and what I stand in.”

Swell. But context is everything and when you wave the bible at your LGBT fans during a Pride event you might as well be waving Leviticus at us too because it amounts to the same incitement of religious passions that have justified killing us, throwing us in prison, torturing us with quack cures, wreaking our lives in every way possible so that Jesus will know you love him. You might think you’re not being hateful because you’re not waving Fred Phelps signs at the fans, but all you’re really being is a coward about it. LGBT fans came to the game that day hoping to feel welcomed and appreciated and you just could not stop yourself from spitting in their faces.

Arne Johnson, of the Rainbow Families Action, said afterward, “One night a year, we asked for the players to cheer for our children, and they couldn’t even manage that.”

They say not to read the comments, but I often do just to find users to block. But this time the comments on all three articles I read, including one on a gay sports page, were thick with vitriol against the LGBT fans. It was so intense I was wondering which right wing pages here were linking to the stories for rage bait. But it could just as easily have been Facebook’s own algorithms stirring up trouble because that translates to engagement.

It’s left me profoundly depressed, which leads to more overall fatigue, and no heart left in me to create anything, and it’s a vicious circle. I just want to lay in bed all day. For every story I read about Pride, I see like a half dozen or more about how much people hate us and want us to be gone. And they’ve done it before.