"There are many other ways to show your support for the NHS rather than using a symbol that has an alternate meaning for a large portion of the population. I feel that this has weakened our power and stance within the country and world."Īnd Chuck is clear, it is the use of the flag he is most concerned over, over the rainbow itself though he admits "the correlation of colours still has a meaning for many in our community. "We've fought so long for a place in the world. "It feels like those that fought and campaigned for us to have a symbol of solidarity, are being belittled by the meaning of the rainbow being changed in the current climate." "Some of these are businesses that would refuse to hang a rainbow flag outside their business during Pride Season." "I've seen many things on Twitter including businesses using the rainbow symbol as a logo. "I feel that the importance of the symbol for our community is being tarnished," Chuck Deer tells me. Since James's tweet earlier this week, others on social media have been sharing their uncertainty about whether they should be upset or–in Twitter user Chuck's case "low key p**sed off"–with this reinvention of the flag. (Photo by Meera Fox/Getty Images) Getty Images Is it erasure to ‘reclaim’ the rainbow Pride flag as a Thank You NHS flag? The Pride Flag flies majestically over the San Francisco Gay Pride parade on Jin San. Not least in Christianity where the rainbow denotes God’s covenant–a connection between God and all living creatures–with Noah. Something which, in 2003 when it was used by anti-war groups, also raised similar questions in reference to the Gilbert Baker six stripe flag.Īnd historically outside of the context of a flag, rainbows have a multitude of meanings for different people. Indeed, the peace flag, which has seven stripes, was used as a symbol of anti-war movements. He does warn “it is worth remembering it has different meanings for different people.” And despite many reworkings of the flag–for example adding black and brown stripes to include people of color or blue and pink for trans communities–it remains a universal symbol.īut as Coward points out in a recent #MuseumFromHome video about the history of the flag, “no-one owns the rainbow.” This is what left us with the red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet LGBT pride flag. They merged indigo and turquoise into the more universal blue so they could achieve an even number of stripes for either side of the parade. The second stripe disappeared when the organisers of the 1979 San Francisco parade split the flag into two to decorate either side of their parade route. But the hot pink stripe was culled for the simple reason that it was a difficult fabric to get hold of at the time. gay politician Harvey Milk was assassinated and demand for the flag rocketed. (Photo by © CORBIS/Corbis via Getty Images) Corbis via Getty Imagesīaker’s version of the flag lost its first stripe after the first U.S. their uniforms, are marched outdoors by Nazi guards on December 19, 1938. Homosexual prisoners at the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen, Germany, wearing pink triangles on. To be really specific, it actually had eight stripes when Baker first made it for the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade celebration on June 25, 1978.īefore Baker’s eight stripe flag, Pink Triangles were the universal sign of LGBT+ suffering due to their use in Nazi death camps to denote gay people. And that’s why in 1978 Gilbert Baker created the rainbow flag.” “It’s also a powerful symbol for community, because all these colours combine into one whole, from different pieces coming together.
“In Ancient Greece, if you saw a rainbow you might think that the goddess Iris, who was a messenger deity, had come down to earth from Olympus,” LGBT+ Museum freelancer Sacha Coward explains. Over the years, the rainbow–ultimately a meteorological phenomenon caused by the refraction light in water droplets–has held different meanings. James's tweet took off–he shared that his mentions became flooded with people saying “it's fine if the LGBT flag gets repurposed, because it ‘can be anything we want it to be.’" Others asked–"why can't it just be a rainbow?" What is the history of the six colour LGBT+ Pride flag? And those people are definitely frustrating." "Those are the people who are actively trying to steal our flag, in my opinion. "What I find frustrating are the people who know it's an LGBT flag but are taking the stance 'well it’s a symbol for the NHS now, we repurpose things all the time.' " quite happy thinking it's for the NHS and doesn't want it any more complicated than that." This irony wasn’t missed by another James who shared the case of his grandad displaying the LGBT Pride Flag at his house "for the NHS":