I’ve flown some version of the rainbow Pride flag from my front porch since we moved in. It’s there to the left of the U.S. flag. They get changed out when the tropical island sun bleaches the vibrant colors and they get taken down for hurricanes. They’ve hung for so long I’m not sure anyone much notices them anymore.

Between the two and the First Amendment they say something to passersby about who we are. You’re welcome here. Come as you are.

Rainbow picket fences are spreading across the island as a proudly defiant show of support for Key West’s historic commitment to the LGBTQ community — and an in-your-face reaction to state government control of both free speech and home rule.

Red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple are almost as ubiquitous around Key West as the colors of a Key West sunset. Those six colors are the ones most folks recognize, the ones used in our now-gone crosswalks, the ones on t-shirts and coozies, the ones showing up on random fences and the hybrid Pride-Conch Republic flags.

I love seeing those colorful pickets. They make me smile and remind me that the rainbow symbolizes hope and rebirth after a storm.

I’ve not painted my white picket fence with rainbow colors and I probably won’t. Still wrestling with that decision, so the next time you ride past, I may have flip-flopped. Other than running afoul of Key West’s Historic Architectural Review Commission, which mandates white or natural pickets for island conformity (so we look like the postcards, I guess), not much stands in my way of grabbing a paintbrush and slapping rainbow stripes on my private property.

Except every time I’m ready to paint, I butt heads with the First Amendment. It’s complicated. Hear me out?

The battle of the pickets | First Amendment for all

We humans are pack animals. We are most comfortable within the cliche “birds of a feather flock together.” We wear pins proclaiming our membership in those flocks. We love signaling our allegiances. Whether it’s a “One Human Family” bumper sticker or “Trump 2024” window decal, we’re showing our colors, so to speak. It’s great when all my like-minded friends fly rainbow flags and paint their pickets. Solidarity and all that.

But I ain’t exactly thrilled when there’s MAGA red and white unfurled or a Nazi swastika flying free. I’ll admit I was irritated when a house on Fleming flew the “Christian” flag, which is morphing into a Christian Nationalist symbol, and which has pride of place in many mainstream — even progressive — Protestant churches.

Back when the first Key West rainbow crosswalks were installed, private funds paid for them. I giddily suggested nonprofits adopt other crosswalks. I mean, wouldn’t it have been cool if Key West High School had crosswalks with conch shells? Fundraising, fun, colorful and a great way to celebrate all that’s good about our island.

No one took me up on the idea, which in hindsight was a good thing. Because the First Amendment would have reared its head with an unpleasant reminder: If you’re gonna paint privately funded rainbows on public property, you’re gonna have to let the Ku Klux Klan paint burning crosses.

Uh. Hard stop. You see, the First Amendment doesn’t make exceptions for our politics or our sensibilities. Even what a reasonable person would call “hate speech” gets the same First Amendment protection as “love speech.”

As recently as 2017, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, no woke liberal he, wrote in a defining case: “Speech that demeans on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender, religion, age, disability or any other similar ground is hateful. But the proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence is that we protect the freedom to express ‘the thought that we hate.’”

Heaven knows how he and other justices will reconcile more than two centuries of First Amendment free speech rulings with the current administration’s outsized determination to silence its detractors. Maybe they’ll just chuck the whole Constitution.

But if I paint my pickets red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple, I can object, but cannot forbid, your decision to paint your fence red, white and black with a swastika smack in the center. For now, I’m sticking with my rainbow flag, my window decals and my hot pink Converse sneakers with their own rainbow tags. I’m not in the mood to provoke a battle of the pickets. You do you, of course, and if you need an assist, I’ve got brushes, paint, decals and this amazing rainbow duct tape.

(Editor’s note: Thanks for Nick Doll, Larry Blackburn and an anonymous poster for the picket fence photos.)