My dad got me the best Christmas present I have ever received this year. pic.twitter.com/uGcvWdsUxI
— BadBee ? (@SatanKotah) December 25, 2016
When Dakotah Whitcomb asked her father for a pride flag for Christmas, she didn't have high hopes. “I just assumed I probably wasn’t going to get one because it was so last-minute,” she told BuzzFeed News. Come Christmas morning, he gave her the flag without hesitation. But it was the accompanying letter he included with the flag that really took her by surprise.
Whitcomb's father already knew she was bisexual; Whitcomb said she came out "accidentally," when her father noticed her happily flirting with a waitress earlier this year — and he had accepted her sexual identity without question. "We were raised with the concept that being gay is okay. We have a lot of LGBT family members and friends," she said.
Whitcomb added that flags are an important part of her family members' identities. They fly a Marine flag, a Navy flag, and an Army flag for her father, mother, grandfather, and brother. "Military has always been part of my family and I can’t join because of medical issues," she explained.
That's what made Whitcomb's father's response to her request for a pride flag all the more heartwarming.
"When I saw that a Gay Pride flag was on your list, at first I thought it was an odd request. But after thinking about it, I think I know why," his letter, which Whitcomb tweeted, begins. "I reckon that you feel that everyone else in the family, except grandma, has a flag that represents something we were/are a part of... So it makes sense that you would want a flag to represent something you are a part of... In the spring, when I hang the flags up, I would be proud to hang yours up."
The flag on its own would have been a pleasant surprise, but it was the promise that she'd be represented along with her other family members that really made the gift special to Whitcomb: "The fact that my dad would fly my pride flag next to everyone’s military flag just made me feel even more loved and included!"
If you ask us, we'd say a "World's Best Dad" mug is in order for Christmas 2017.
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