(Well yes, holiday time, but it quicky turns to man-on-man sex in street language, so not suitable for kids or the sexually modest.)
Yesterday, June 14th, was Flag Day in my country: “It commemorates the adoption of the flag of the United States on June 14, 1777, by resolution of the Second Continental Congress.” (from Wikipedia). I am not in the habit of flying the American flag, not out of a lack of love for the country, but out of a desire not to be seen as a yahoo flying the flag as an aggressive symbol of exclusion for those who aren’t “real Americans” — people of color, lgbt folk, liberals in coastal big cities, artists and scholars, and all the rest of us scum. If I flew an American flag yesterday, it would have had to be in conjunction with at least a Rainbow Pride Flag. But I don’t have the flagpoles, or any place to put them. I do have a rainbow flag draped over the fencing in my entryway, and that’s already up against the tolerance of the condo Homeowners Association. And I display the rainbow flag — and also the Swiss flag — on gym shorts and t-shirts.
I think of these displays on my body as flagging gay and flagging Swiss, with a use of the verb flag — to convey (in my rough definition) something like ‘(U.S. gay) display, on one’s body or in one’s attire, a symbol of identity or taste, with the intention of communicating those to potentially interested others’ — that appears not to be covered in standard general or slang dictionaries (up to and including OED2, though that’s in sore need of updating).
I think Flag Day should be left as it is, but today, June 15th, midway through Gay Pride Month, would be a good moment for (Gay) Flagging Day, using conventions that grew up in the mid-20th century.
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