Where's the love? Not on American Airlines.

12 days after British law enforcement officials thwarted a terrorist plot to blow up airplanes using liquid explosives, the captain of American Airlines Flight 45 threatened to divert the plane due to an entirely new kind of perceived terror in the sky (click here for the article)

It wasn't shoe bombers, box-cutter wielding Arab extremists, or anything requiring the skills of Samuel L. Jackson to dispose.

It was a gay couple, engaging in a bit of post-takeoff kissyface.

“He would rest his head on my shoulder or the other way around. We’d kiss—not kiss kiss, just mwah", said one of the two paramours. However, this slight display of affection irked a stewardess with "Texas hair, like, from the nineteen-sixties", prompting her to issue a no-PDA decree.

The purser was not much helpful. After acknowledging that the lovers' behavior was perfectly appropriate, she recanted after being asked whether the stewardess would have admonished them had they been a heterosexual couple.

The argument between the couple (and certain of their allies, one of whom was looking forward to a José Saramago book, some melatonin, and a nap) and the stewardess escalated to such a pitch that the captain threatened from the cockpit (sorry, I couldn't resist using the word "cockpit" in an article about homosexuals) to divert the plane if people didn't shut up.

But a spokesperson for American delivered the real kicker. In defense of the stewardess's actions, he spoke: “Our passengers need to recognize that they are in an environment with all ages, backgrounds, creeds, and races. We have an obligation to make as many of them feel as comfortable as possible.”

I guess his statement doesn't apply to gays.

The tragedy of this is that, if you replaced the same-sex couple with an interracial couple, and turned the clock back forty or fifty years, a similar result is entirely plausible, thus illuminating the anachronistic mindset of the stewardess, the purser, and the AA spokesperson.

Get over it, America. This isn't a flight from Greenwood, SC to Grand Rapids, MI (assuming both of the aforementioned cities actually have airports). It's from Paris to New York. If you, as a stewardess, don't want to be exposed to homosexual couples expressing their feelings for one another on a flight, get off the international flights and stick to routes between one Flyover City and another.

And don't give me this caca about how It's Just Not Good For The Children. Kids are surprisingly tolerant, not having lived long enough to be exposed to petty prejudices. And shielding your progeny from homosexuality is a lost cause. Look at Bert and Ernie. Sure, B & E may be so far in the closet they might as well be in Narnia, but the evidence suggests otherwise. They're grown men, and bathe together. Kids aren't as stupid as their parents may want them to be.

And as for the PDA itself, we've all seen Will and Grace, Rent, Ellen, and Cruel Intentions. Homosexual pairings have been tolerated, accepted, and in the case of girl-on-girl action (remember Marissa and Olivia's kiss in the O.C.), flat-out encouraged.

Which begs the question, if the homosexual couple had been a pair of 20something attractive women, would anyone have cared?