My name is David and I am a teacher.

One Friday morning I read a story about a 9th grade teacher who hung an LGBTQ flag outside of her classroom at her school. My understanding is that her intent was to let LGBTQ students know that she welcomed them if they needed to talk to someone or needed support. A good idea.

However, parents of kids who attended the school said that hanging the flag outside of the classroom was sending a message of division and exclusivity, not inclusivity. Kids who were not LGBTQ did not feel welcome in the teacher’s room who displayed the LGBTQ flag. The parents of those non-LGBTQ students asked that the flag be taken down. The teacher refused. So, the parents started a petition to have the LGBTQ flag taken down. In response, the parents who supported the LGBTQ flag-hanging teacher suggested that the petitioning parents should hang a heterosexual flag outside of other classrooms if they wanted.

Hmm. A heterosexual flag. That was a thought-provoking suggestion. Was there a heterosexual flag? I’ve never seen such a flag. Even if there was a heterosexual flag, what would it look like?

Then I thought, even if there was a heterosexual flag and other teachers decided to hang that flag in front of their classrooms might that not be viewed as a symbol of division, of exclusivity?

Don’t we already have enough division these days?

Might we be a little better off if we all just started joining hands.

As mentioned, I learned of this situation on a Friday morning. By the time Saturday came I couldn’t help but think of any 9th grader in that school walking down the hallway seeing heterosexual flags in front of some rooms and LGBTQ flags in front of others. Wow. That’s a pretty big burden to place on a kid who is not even old enough to drive to a movie -- and even if they were old enough to drive to a movie, they would not be old enough get into an R-rated one.

So my thought was, “What if we didn’t have two flags? …What if we had just one flag…for all of us?” What if we had one flag so when it was hung in front of a classroom, or in front of anywhere, it sent this message to that 9th grader, “It doesn’t matter if your straight or gay or LBT or Q…come on in. You are welcome here. We can talk to each other and learn about each other.” How great would that be.

It was now Sunday night of that same weekend. As I laid my head down on my pillow I think I had a small smile on my face as I thought, “Yes, how nice it would be if we had just one flag for all of us.”

BAM! It was 2:30 a.m. and something rocked me out of my slumber. I was awakened by a thunderbolt!

Now, I am not a person who gets “messages.” I don’t hear voices from the gods. I don’t even remember my dreams. But whatever it was that was in my head – a voice, my psyche, Divine Intervention, too much pasta at dinner – whatever it was, it was driving me up and out of bed and telling me that “we” were going to design a flag at that moment on that night. Simply I had no choice.

So I went to my computer to design a flag. Please know, I am NOT an artist. While I have been a lifelong supporter and lover of the arts, I cannot draw anything. I once drew a map for a driver who was lost and he asked why there was a dinosaur standing on top of a whale (and we were no where close to water…or the Jurassic Period.) By the time I was in 1st grade, unless the world suddenly grew a love of horribly-drawn stick figure dogs with no ears and all four legs on one side of its body, my teachers and parents had slotted me for something other than “the visual arts.”

But the good news is, at 2:30 a.m. on that Sunday night I had been given a vision of a flag that was perfectly clear in my head. It was ALL there. The colors, the blue field, the words. It was all shown to me. I did not have to design anything.

Fifteen minutes later it was all done. The background, the colors, the print, the font. All of it.

As you can see, the flag that came to me in a dream has all of the colors of the LGBTQ flag, AND equally importantly, it includes the other colors as well -- black, brown, white, and beige.

It is a flag that is for everyone.

It is a flag that, when that 9th grader – whether they are straight, LGBTQ, or anything else they want to be – sees it hanging in that school hallway, or anywhere, that 9th grader can know that it says, “You’re welcome here. We are all in this together.”

It’s a flag for all of us. One for All.