Stars and stripes and rainbows. (History).

Patriotic songs may be more popular now than they've been in years, but did you know that when you sing "America the Beautiful," you are reciting lyrics penned by a lesbian? Katharine Lee Bates was 34 when an 1893 expedition to Pike's Peak in Colorado inspired her to write the poem that later became one of the nation's most beloved patriotic songs.

Bates graduated from and taught at Wellesley College, where she met fellow scholar Katharine Coman. The women had an intense and affectionate 25-year relationship, until Coman succumbed to cancer in 1915. Bates, writing to a friend a few years before her death in 1929, said, "So much of me died with Katharine Coman that I'm sometimes not quite sure whether I'm alive or not."

"God Bless America," written by Irving Berlin, doesn't have a gay history, but it does have a bearing on patriotic gay people today. Berlin set up a God Bless America Fund for the royalties of the popular song in 1940. Most of the proceeds--nearly $6 million in the intervening years--go to Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts of New York City. The fund's trustees have been assured by the New York Boy Scouts that it doesn't discriminate against gay members. In fact, the New York Boy Scouts is lobbying to get the national group to change its policy on gays, says spokesman Don York, adding that New York City scout leaders "are judged by their behavior within our organization," not by their sexual orientation. Berlin would be proud.