There is a dark undercurrent of homophobia perceptible in similar acts of hatred played out on video games such as Minecraft shared anonymously on YouTube as play-by-play videos. And this act even occurs among some churches and community centers which hang the Gay Pride flag in solidarity with the gay community.
In 2020, in Webster, South Dakota, Troy Kreich’s flag was allegedly stolen and burned by Darrin Pesall on a Facebook live video. Flag burnings have also happened at people’s homes in small towns in the United States. Notwithstanding President Biden overturning this former order at US embassies in 2021, there is the “ Old Glory Only Act” currently proposed by Congressman Jeff Duncan to ensure “that no United States diplomatic or consular post flies any flag other than the United States flag over such post.”Īt a community level, there are Gay Pride flag burnings increasingly happening across America in cities at nightclubs such as Alibi Lounge, one of New York City’s only Black-owned gay bars, where two incidents occurred within a month of each other in 2019. We cannot forget that President Donald Trump banned the Pride flag from being flown on official embassy flagpoles in 2019 and it is still currently banned by the Pentagon on United States military installations. While LGBTQIA+ people may feel the rainbow was hijacked by the NHS, there is simultaneously a parallel international campaign to “reclaim the rainbow” by some Christians who vehemently believe the rainbow is a symbol of God and was stolen from them!
In July 2021, in an Instagram story the artist, Gray Wielebinski, mused “Still thinking about how fucking bizarre it was when they tried to rebrand supporting the NHS/essential workers with the rainbow flag here last summer for no reason except so homophobic/transphobic people could put rainbows up without shame anymore.” Guillaume Vandame, “symbols” (2019-2021), Leadenhall Market, on display for the 10th edition of Sculpture in the City, London (photograph: Nick Turpin, courtesy the artist) The rainbow enamel pins that had been used by doctors and nurses to suggest alliance with the gay community were now just an inane form of self-promotion. This is clearly not the case, as we saw with Peter Blake’s iconic pop design. One friend suggested that the difference was that the rainbows supporting the NHS were handmade but the rainbows for the gay community were mechanical. However, in the midst of the pandemic, the rainbow suddenly became a symbol for the NHS in the United Kingdom and the association it once had with the gay community quickly dissipated. The rainbow also relates to gender identity, discrimination based on this identity, and the general stigma around homosexuality that regards it as something taboo and debased. It readily appears as a queer symbol even when it is not in its original format and functions as a stand-in for all these original core values, as well as the continued pursuit of human rights and equality, in terms of issues such as the decriminalization of homosexuality, the age of consent, and the right to get married and adopt children. In recent art history, the rainbow has appeared frequently in the contemporary art of Rob Pruitt, Jonathan Horowitz, Ugo Rondinone, Polly Apfelbaum, David McDiarmid, among other artists, as a symbol for the LGBTQIA+ community. Does that make the original Pride flag outdated? It seems like the Pride flag changes just as quickly as the latest smartphone.
A new and somewhat controversial version appeared in Philadelphia in 2017 with black and brown stripes to represent people of color, then an updated Progress Pride flag by Daniel Quasar in 2018 included these stripes, plus the colors of the Trans Pride flag, and now there is a third version, made by Valentino Vecchietti in June 2021, riffing on Quasar’s version with the addition of the Intersex Pride flag designed by Morgan Carpenter in 2013. Some might say it has been overproduced and lost its meaning even within the gay community. Since that time, the Pride flag has become the basic model for numerous flags representing the spectrum of identifications via gender, sexuality, and fetish.