The Significance Of The Fish Banner

A few years ago I decided to update Christian Gays. I knew that I wanted an animated header but wasn’t sure just what it would be. I was thinking of Christian and gay symbols (fish, cross, rainbow) when I had a vision of myself being a fish who was always going in the opposite (wrong) direction to the crowd, and from that, the image of a rainbow (fun) fish among the other (plain) fish, was born.

My (artist) brother, Garry, drew 16 pics of the fish with the fins in various positions. I scanned the drawings into the computer and coloured them. That was the beginning.

It then took me six months to learn Flash so that I could actually animate these little fishy images. I worked day and night for hours upon hours until I finally had the finished product. I was so proud of myself!

Unfortunately it wasn’t until after I had the fish completed and tried to view it on my son-in-law’s iPhone that I found it was not viewable on any Apple products like iPhone or iPad. What? I had spent all these months learning Flash, and now I find out that Apple doesn’t like Flash, and is not going to adapt their products for Flash to work on them.

I was heart-broken. What could I do?

I investigated and found that the newer technology is HTML5 (not to be confused with HTML – absolutely no similarities). So I decided that I would learn HTML5 and do my fishies all over again. (I’m a little stubborn when I get an idea in my head).

I started reading, and it was so far beyond me that I didn’t even understand where to start or what it was that I needed to learn.

I did the only practical thing under the circumstances. I hired a coder from England to convert my Flash fishies into HTML5 fishies. It cost me $200.

So that is the story of the fish.

The invitation on the banner is for people who see themselves as the rainbow fish (just like me), and we are inviting them (you?) into the Chat Rooms and Forums, away from all the dull fish out there who really don’t know what it’s like to swim in a different direction from the crowd, to come into a space where they (you?) can be themselves among others who know what it’s like.

So we welcome YOU into our “family” and pray you will feel comfortable among others who share so much in common.

God bless,
Mary