【chaucer’s (anti-)eroticisms and the queer middle ages by tison pugh】

This week has shown a trend of Americans trumping hate with love in the form of rainbow flags.

Mike Pence's D.C. neighbors' have chaucer’s (anti-)eroticisms and the queer middle ages by tison pughbeen hanging rainbow flags on their houses to protest his homophobic views, and about 20 residents of a Michigan neighborhood hung pride flags after a neighbor expressed distaste for them.

Lexi Magnusson, 34, is following suit – but with a luminescent twist. After her neighbor in the Seattle area expressed anti-LGBTQ opinions, Magnusson covered her own lawn in 10,000 rainbow Christmas lights.

SEE ALSO: Mike Pence's neighbors are calling him out with rainbow flags

"Our new neighbors are bigots. Since regular aggression leads to assault charges, I went with passive aggression. 10,000 lights later," she captioned the photo on Reddit.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

"We had a new neighbor stop by our house to eagerly meet us. She's Mormon, and heard that we were, too. My guess is that she thought we were still believers, even though my husband told her we no longer attend," Magnusson wrote to Mashable. "I imagine she thought we still held the same belief about LGBT issues as the Church does. We absolutely do not. It's why I left the Mormon church."

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Magnusson then explained to Mashablethe ways in which her neighbor expressed anti-LGBTQ views.

When we asked her what brought her to Washington she said it was to protect her children. She spoke about how disturbed she was that her son got turned down by a girl for prom because she was going with her girlfriend. She was very upset that the school allowed "that" at the prom. She then went on to talk about how there was an assembly at the middle school her child was attending about transgender people. She told me that they even had a kid stand up and talk about how he is transgender. I thought she had meant that the school had outed him, and was horrified – but she quickly cleared it up. The boy was the one who had pushed for the assembly. Can you imagine how brave that kid had to be? She said that she wanted to get her children away from that sort of influence and people making their "lifestyle" okay.

Even though Magnusson's instinct was to respond to her neighbor with anger, she forced herself to take a calmer approach.

Here's the thing: I was a fully believing Mormon once. I know where she is coming from. If I had yelled at her it would only feed into her persecution complex and false belief that LGBT people and their allies, along with people who have left the Mormon church, are angry bullies who are not tolerant of other people's views. I hate that whole line of reasoning – but I knew that if she was willing to move her kids to get away from the gays (She moved to Washington. It's basically North Oregon.) there would be little I could say to her to change her mind. She would have been right though, I am not tolerant of that "point of view."

I wanted to say more to her. I wanted to write her a letter telling her how sad I was that she would feel this way about other humans, especially children. But it wouldn't have mattered. Then the election happened and the weight of all of those voters who feel exactly the same as she does really set in.

While Magnusson's Reddit post jokes about her hanging the lights as an act of passive aggression, she explained that it is more than that.

"It wasn't just a passive aggressive middle finger at my neighbor, I wanted it something more to show my solidarity and belief than just the Human Rights Campaign stickers on our cars," she said. "I've worked in the background to support LGBT causes and have been very vocal on Facebook – but in real life it's still really hard for me. It's probably the wimpy way to go, but it's not nothing."

The lights are pretty impressive in themselves. She decorated them with old Christmas lights she had laying around, and she spray painted some white ones yellow and orange to fully achieve the rainbow effect. And there are more rainbow lights to come.

"I haven't finished the roofline because my husband has been out of town and he doesn't love when I go climbing around on the roof by myself," Magnusson said.

Hopefully passive aggression can also lend a hand in trumping hate.

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