Resident lights up entire home with rainbow colors after Home Owners' Association bans pride flags

A resident was asked by their Home Owners' Association (HOA) to remove a pride flag displayed on their porch and they responded in the best manner possible. They took down the flag but lit up their entire home and porch in rainbow pride colors. The resident was asked to do so citing a new rule that only the US flag could be displayed by residents. The rule was put in place after people displayed flags reflecting their stances on the Black Lives Matter movement.

The resident took to Reddit to share the developments. "Due to some neighbors flying BLM flags, Thin blue line flags, and other opinion flags, our HOA decided last month that we’re only allowed to fly the USA flag, and nothing else," they wrote on Reddit. "The day after the decision, we receive an email that someone reported our Pride flag (that we had in our house since 2016) and that we needed to take it down. We complied and removed the flag," they added.

The resident realized that they were violating the HOA rules, so they decided to go through the rule book to find a better way to express support for the LGBTQIA+ community. "Looking through our new rules, we noticed that removable lights are permitted without restriction so... we bought 6 colored floodlights, and we washed our house in pride colors. A little less subtle than our simple flag," wrote the original poster, before adding, "A lot more fun for anyone complaining about the flag itself and what it represents."

The person was flooded with positive comments after sharing an image of their house lit up in rainbow colors. One joked, "OP please report back when HOA tries to pass new floodlight rules." Another commented, "Love it too. My condo board had me take down my 'In this house, we believe Black Lives Matter, Women's Rights Are Human Rights, No Human is Illegal, Science Is Real, Love is Love, Kindness is Everything,' sign. So I bought 10 more and laminated them, and now they decorate the railing on my balcony 😊. Wish I had a ground unit, I'd totally do this!"

Many questioned the need for HOAs and their many rigid rules. "HOAs are mind-boggling to me, especially in a country like America, where everyone supposedly values their freedom. You are paying tons of money to own a house that is rigidly subject to what other people want. I don't understand it. I will never understand it," wrote one person. 

As we reported earlier, in a similar story, a gay man, Mykey O’Halloran was threatened for preparing to paint his home, in Australia, in rainbow colors. A homophobic neighbor had threatened to kill him. While the man who threatened him was charged with unlawful assault and making threats to kill, his community stepped up to show their support for him. O’Halloran's neighbors started a campaign to raise money to help O’Halloran paint his home in rainbow colors. Some of them volunteered to help after traveling from as far away as Melbourne.

"Thank you to those that came by. After a hurricane, comes a rainbow. So much community support and love from everyone that stopped by to say hello yesterday or picked up a paintbrush and helped make my rainbow house a reality. I appreciate every positive message I’ve received in the past month or the words of encouragement to be myself, words of love and appreciation of standing up and not allowing bad behavior in this day in age, and yesterday we took a stand against bullying and homophobia and that goes for all LGBTIQA+ phobia," wrote O’Halloran.