Moving into a new neighborhood always carries some risk to it.  You never know if you’re going to have good neighbors or if you’ll be spending your time peering out of your curtains to make sure it’s safe to leave your house.  When you’re a gay or lesbian couple, the anxiety ratchets up a notch, because there’s always the underlying concern of how much “PDA” you will feel comfortable with in your yard, how you introduce yourselves, etc. When we moved into our house, my wife and I decided that we would simply be who we were–an older, lesbian couple who were happily settled together and wanted to participate in our neighborhood community.

Seven years on, this plan seems to have worked well, mostly thanks to my partner’s more gregarious personality.  She knows everyone and their dogs, chats with the kids in the street, leaves cans for the homeless guy in the park to collect and puts the wheelbarrow full of free squash out in the driveway in the summer time.  We have been lucky.  I know there are gay and lesbian couples who are not so fortunate in their neighborhoods.  I know there is still hate and distrust out there for people of any “deviation” simply because they exist.

This was brought home to me recently, when the other day I got an e-mail from one of our neighbors down the street.  It was a forwarded e-mail and the subject line was “Don’t Buy These!!!!”  This neighbor is a lovely woman, a bit older than we are, and ever since we first met her and her husband, they have welcomed us as neighbors and we have become friends.  They have grandchildren about the same ages as ours who love our dog and always want to visit when they are here.  They have invited us and included us as a couple to their Thanksgiving and Christmas tables.  Even though there are certainly religious, cultural and social “differences”, they have accepted us as we are with no questions asked.  We have met their families and they have met ours.  We have said and received prayers for each other.  In short, they are good people, the kind of people one wants as neighbors.

By the subject line, I thought the e-mail would be about some kind of faulty product or other.  But it wasn’t.  When I opened it and read it (and I only did this because it was from this particular person; frequently I don’t open forwarded e-mails), I realized that it was one of the most sneakily hateful things I had ever read on many different levels.

The first few lines:  “Don’t buy these!!! USPS new (my emphasis) 44-cent stamp—celebrates Muslim holiday.”  The e-mail then went on with a graphic of the stamp which showed gold Arabic script on a blue background with the word EID in the top left and “Greetings” on the bottom.  The shape of the script was vaguely tree-like.  Then there was an 8-item list of bombings and attacks by Muslims on the U.S. and then the kicker:

“Now  President Obama has directed the United States Postal Service to REMEMBER and  HONOR the EID MUSLIM holiday season with a new  commemorative 44 Cent First Class Holiday  Postage Stamp..

REMEMBER to adamantly & vocally boycott this stamp, when you are purchasing your stamps at the post office.”

The above is pasted directly from the e-mail.  It ended with an exhortation for all “patriotic Americans” to pass along the e-mail and “get the word out.”  This completely took me back.  In the current political climate, with all the right wing-nuts screaming about Obama’s every breath, if he had “directed” the Postal Service regarding any kind of stamp, much less having to do with anything Muslim, it would have been all over the news and not in a good way.  I don’t watch much news, but I knew I would have heard about that.

So, off to Snopes I went.  As expected, this forwarded e-mail mixes truth and lies.  There IS such a stamp.  It was issued BY the Postal Service on September 1, 2001, just 10 days before the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.  It was issued as part of the postal service’s Holiday Celebrations Series, at the initial rate of 34 cents and has since been re-issued at updated first-class rates in 2002, 2006, 2007, 2008, and most recently in September 2009.  Additionally, if you want this stamp, you have to ASK for it specifically, so “boycotting” it is moot.

To read the entire report by Snopes, go here:  Muslim Postage Stamp

Normally, when I get an e-mail like this, I just delete it and mentally shake my head to clear it.  But this one disturbed me more than most.  It bothered me that this sweet lady who cheerfully seems to accept her lesbian neighbors would pass on an e-mail that manages to cover both religious and political bases of hatred all at once.  It was anti-Islam and anti-Obama and managed to link the two, i.e., since President Obama was “supposed” to have issued this stamp that obviously meant that he was “pro-Islam” and as such, slapped all “patriotic Americans” in the face.  We don’t really talk about politics, so I’m not sure of her thoughts on the current President.  She is quite a devout Catholic, so maybe this was more in response to the Muslim aspect of the email rather than the political side.

But either way, my neighbor could not be described as a “hateful” person.  She and her husband are charitable, accepting and kind.  As above, I don’t even know what her political leanings are, because we don’t really discuss politics.  Yet she was passing this nasty e-mail on, and probably not just to me, even though there were no other names in the forward.  And I could only wonder if the other recipients would be passing it along, sending another virus of hatred worming its way towards everyday folks whose only mistake is to take these kinds of e-mails at face value.  Obama equals pro-Muslim equals anti-American equals who knows what comes next.  I had to wonder if her next little forward MIGHT not be some kind of gay-bashing.  Maybe she DIDN’T realize that my partner and I are gay and just thought we were “little old ladies” living together.

After thinking over how I should respond to my neighbor, in the end, I simply opted for replying that I had checked out Snopes (included the link), and stated in the e-mail that the stamp had been issued over eight years ago, and so had nothing to do with President Obama.  All I could do was hope she read my message and passed it along as well.

And hope the next e-mail won’t be something hateful about gays or lesbians.