Beyond the rainbow: Other LGBTQ flags (and communities)

The rainbow is no stranger to gay pride celebrations. It is as natural to the LGBTQ rights movement as the pink triangle, as inevitable a symbol to be seen at parades, festivals and rallies as red T-shirts and black armbands.

But when the rainbow came in social media form, it was previously associated with self-identified LGBTQ individuals and organizations, more likely to be seen in the gay districts and liberal enclaves of big cities or universities.

The rainbow has come to the mainstream, to corporations, to LGBTQ allies, and, well, everywhere.

Within hours of the US Supreme Court’s landmark decision granting same-sex couples the right to marry nationwide, Facebook unveiled a previously internal-only tool that allowed users to apply a rainbow filter over their profile picture. The filter, inspired by the pride flag hanging over Facebook’s campus to mark Pride Month, had been developed by two Facebook interns over a 72-hour hackathon. In the following weekend, more than 26 million Facebook users applied the filter to their profile picture.

I’ve not seen any data on whether those users were LGBTQ or were allies, whether they were showing pride in the Supreme Court decision or showing support for the myriad couples now able to get married, or all of the above. I know that personally, in my Facebook feed, most of the users with a rainbow profile picture were indeed straight, cisgender allies, making the phenomenon that much more noteworthy and that much more overwhelming.

Much has already been written about the rainbow-fied profile pictures. Some have speculated that the tool was another experiment to gather information on its users. Others have lamented that changing one’s profile picture has zero effect on anything and amounts to nothing more than self-righteous attaboy backslapping. And gay reporter/writer Peter Moskowitz said the use of rainbow profile pictures was an appropriation that cheapened the struggles of the gay rights movement. As Moskowitz wrote:

I’ve earned the right to claim pride through years of internal strife over my sexuality. Others have died in the name of gay pride. More still have been jailed, have been disowned by their families, and have sued their state governments for it. Gay pride is not something you can claim by waving a flag. The rainbow symbol is easy to co-opt, but the experience it represents is not.

That’s why it wasn’t comforting to see hundreds of my Facebook friends’ profile pictures draped in rainbows. It didn’t feel like they were understanding my struggle; it felt like they were cheapening it, celebrating a victory they had no part in winning.

Some of the rainbow-colored faces were people I would never talk to about being gay – a relative with conservative politics, high school buddies I didn’t come out to because I feared losing their friendships. They weren’t necessarily homophobic, but they weren’t great allies either. They didn’t march during pride celebrations; they didn’t participate in the “day of silence”; they didn’t even bother to inquire about my life. If they were true allies to me or the LGBT community, where were they before Friday?

Moskowitz’s Washington Post piece has been widely circulated, and resonated with many in the LGBTQ community. I didn’t share Moskowitz’s sentiments, though I did feel more than a twinge of sadness.

I thought of a gay friend I had who passed away a few years ago. He died of natural causes, but had attempted suicide years earlier, when he had been a lonely, alienated high school student. He felt isolated and alone at his high school because he was gay. With my late friend in mind, I did not see the profile pictures as an appropriation or as an attempt to jump on a bandwagon. Instead, I saw them as the digital equivalent of the “safe space” stickers I used to see around campus when I was in college. I saw the profile pictures as a way for straight, cisgender people to indicate they were supportive of their friends.

That said, however cynical Moskowitz’s take might seem, he does invite us to look at the history of the rainbow flag and other LGBTQ banners whose storied background many of us didn’t understand before the flood of profile pictures a few weeks ago.

Gilbert Baker first created the Rainbow Flag after Harvey Milk asked Baker to make a flag for a march he was organizing. The rainbow seemed a natural symbol, as it had been associated with the gay rights movement ever since the Stonewall Riots in 1969, which coincided with the week of Judy Garland’s death. The first flag, made in 1978, had eight colors:

hot pink, red, orange, yellow, green, turquoise, indigo/blue and violet — but it gradually lost its stripes until it became the six-color version most commonly used today. Each of the colors has its own significance, he says: hot pink for sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, turquoise for art, indigo for harmony and violet for spirit.

The flag lost its hot pink stripe when Baker approached the Paramount Flag Company to begin mass producing them – the hot pink fabric was too rare and expensive to include. The flag lost its indigo stripe before the 1979 Gay Freedom Day Parade. The committee organizing the parade wanted to split the flag in half and fly each part from the light poles along both sides of Market Street, so it became a six-striped flag.

The rainbow flag is the most commonly known flag associated with LGBTQ issues, but certainly isn’t the only one. It’s not even the only one that you can overlay on your profile picture.

Michael Page created the bisexual pride flag (above) in 1998 to represent bisexual people at Pride rallies. Page’s reasoning for his design:

The pink color represents sexual attraction to the same sex only (gay and lesbian), the blue represents sexual attraction to the opposite sex only (straight) and the resultant overlap color purple represents sexual attraction to both sexes (bi). The key to understanding the symbolism in the Bi Pride Flag is to know that the purple pixels of color blend unnoticeably into both the pink and blue, just as in the ‘real world’ where bi people blend unnoticeably into both the gay/lesbian and straight communities.

You can even overlay the bisexual pride flag onto your Facebook profile.

Monica Helms, a transgender woman, a created the transgender pride flag (above) in 1999. The reasoning for her design:

The stripes at the top and bottom are light blue, the traditional color for baby boys. The stripes next to them are pink, the traditional color for baby girls. The stripe in the middle is white, for those who are intersex, transitioning or consider themselves having a neutral or undefined gender. The pattern is such that no matter which way you fly it, it is always correct, signifying us finding correctness in our lives.

You can even overlay the transgender pride flag onto your Facebook profile.

The International Bear Brotherhood Flag (above) was introduced by Craig Byrnes in early 1996 to represent bears, “a term for rugged gay men who often exhibit body hair and can be heavyset (though this isn’t always the case).” A similar but different flag had been designed by Steve Heyl and Jim Maxwell in early 1992.

Of course, these are but a few of the flags associated with communities within the LGBTQ movement. There are many other flags.

The rainbow flag, which may or may not have just experienced its “tipping point,” has become the most well-known flag associated with gay rights. If you hadn’t seen it before two weeks ago, you’ve certainly seen it now.

Will the other flags be as ubiquitous?

LGBTQ advocates have long said that same-sex marriage was but one of many issues affecting the community. Transgender issues have gained more visibility in the mainstream press, for a variety of reasons. Laverne Cox was featured on the cover of TIME and Caitlin Jenner appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair. Islan Nettles’s murder and Leelah Acorn’s suicides have highlighted the threats and pressures facing the transgender community, especially transgender women and and transgender women of color.

Obama’s stance on gay marriage in 2008, and what that means in 2014

This past Friday, Mike Huckabee referenced Obama’s 2008 views on gay marriage when speaking to Laura Ingraham on “The O’Reilly Factor”:

The position that I hold is the position that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden held in 2008. Barack Obama held it until 2012. And my question that I would love to pose to the president is this: Mr. President, please explain that when you said in 2008 at the Saddleback Church forum that you stood for traditional marriage and you did so because you were a Christian and because it’s what the Bible taught, please answer: Were you lying then, are you lying now, or did the Bible get rewritten?

View the video below:

Huckabee’s not the only one referencing Obama’s stance in 2008. In the last few weeks, in the wake of Brendan Eich’s resignation as CEO of Mozilla, several pundits and bloggers have referenced Barack Obama’s views on same-sex marriage in 2008 when he was a candidate running for president. The unifying question was this: If Brendan Eich had to resign as CEO of Mozilla because he gave $1,000 to support Proposition 8 in 2008, why does Barack Obama get a pass for saying in 2008 that marriage should be between a man and a woman?

It echoes a similar question posed by Larry Elder of WND a few years ago, who asked why Rick Santorum was being scrutinized for his views on same-sex marriage, but Obama was getting a “pass” when, in Elder’s estimation, Obama had similar views as Santorum had.

DID Obama share the same viewpoint as Santorum, Eich or Huckabee? Well, how comparable Obama is to Eich, Huckabee or Santorum depends on how narrowly or broadly you define his views in 2008.

Indeed, in 2008, at Saddleback Church, Obama did say, “I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. Now, for me as a Christian… it is also a sacred union. God’s in the mix.”

Click the YouTube video below to watch in full.

In that video, after saying that he believed that marriage is between a man and a woman, then-candidate Obama said he supports civil unions. He also said he does not believe in a constitutional amendment defining marriage. As recently as 2012, a month after Elder’s column comparing Obama to Santorum, Santorum voiced opposition to civil unions for same-sex couples while saying that he couples could work through the existing legal system to use contracts to get each of the rights associated with marriage.

Thus, to compare someone’s views on same-sex marriage to Barack Obama’s view in 2008 simply on the definition of marriage as a man and woman doesn’t tell the whole story on Obama or that other person’s viewpoints on civil unions. To only stop at the man-woman definition of marriage is too narrow and potentially misrepresents both Obama and the people to whom he’s being compared.

Specifically, if we’re comparing Obama and Brendan Eich. Eich was pressured to resign because he gave $1,000 to support Proposition 8. Obama, in 2008, did say, “I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman.” But in 2008, Obama also said that Proposition 8 was “divisive and discriminatory.”

It’s unknown why Eich supported Prop 8, or what his personal views are. When the donation became public knowledge, he said he didn’t want to discuss Prop 8 on his blog or on Twitter. He said he wanted to focus on the company, not his personal beliefs.

[W]ithout getting into my personal beliefs, which I separate from my Mozilla work — when people learned of the donation, they felt pain. I saw that in friends’ eyes, [friends] who are LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgendered]. I saw that in 2012. I am sorry for causing that pain.

Hampton Catlin, a developer who couldn’t legally marry or start a business with his partner until the Supreme Court ruled last year that backers of Proposition 8 lacked standing, had blogged that he and his husband Michael would be pulling their product from the Mozilla Marketplace. Many came to see them as the figureheads of the boycott. After Eich’s resignation, Hampton Catlin wrote:

I met with Brendan and asked him to just apologize for the discrimination under the law that we faced. He can still keep his personal beliefs, but I wanted him to recognize that we faced real issues with immigration and say that he never intended to cause people problems.

It’s heartbreaking to us that he was unwilling to say even that.

We absolutely don’t believe that everyone who voted yes on Prop 8 is evil. In fact, we’re sure that most of them just didn’t understand the impact the law would have. That’s why so many people have changed their mind in 4 short years – because they saw the impact and pain that the law caused to friends and family members.

People think we were upset about his past vote. Instead we were more upset with his current and continued unwillingness to discuss the issue with empathy. Seriously, we assumed that he would reconsider his thoughts on the impact of the law (not his personal beliefs), issue an apology, and then he’d go on to be a great CEO.

The fact it ever went this far is really disturbing to us.

Many think that Eich got a raw deal and it was unfair that he was pressured to resigned. But has Obama gotten a clean pass on his statements?

If Obama or anyone who voiced opposition to same-sex marriage ever got a “pass,” it certainly wasn’t an across-the-board pass from the LGBTQ community. A quick Google search of the terms “Obama” “gay marriage” shows quickly that prominent sites and blogs about LGBTQ issues — The Advocate, The Bilerico Project, GoodAsYou and Towleroad — show that Obama, Hillary Clinton and other Democrats did not get a “pass” on their stances on same-sex marriage or other issues. Bill Clinton, the president who signed the Defense of Marriage Act into law, didn’t receive a pass last year when he wrote an op-ed denouncing the law.

When former Florida governor Charlie Crist announced his support for same-sex marriage in an interview this past winter, he, too, compared his previous stance to that of Obama in 2008, but when comparing himself to Obama, he didn’t simply stop at the man-woman definition of marriage:

The President and I had the same view: we supported civil unions. I saw the interview he did with Robin Roberts last spring [in which he expressed support for same sex marriage]. I’m sure you’ve seen it. It’s powerful, because you can tell he’s speaking from the heart.

I can’t speak for the President, but I suspect that to some degree, like me, he felt his support for civil unions was political. And so he’s finally saying, ‘Enough is enough. I’m over this. I’m not going to play the political angle anymore. I’m tired of it.’ Which is just the way I feel. You get to a point in your life where you say, ‘I’m just going to tell it.’ And here I am… I’m telling it. And I don’t care what anyone thinks.

Similarly, Richard Socarides, a former adviser to Bill Clinton, conceded in a New Yorker piece last year that Bill Clinton’s signing of the Defense of Marriage Act was fueled by politics rather than personal views.

As the tide turns and public opinion changes, more and more famous politicians who opposed same-sex marriage will announce a public change in their stance on the issue. They might use the word “evolved,” like Obama did, or they will cite a family member is the reason for their change of heart, like Republican Rob Portman did in March 2013.

And as they voice their support for same-sex marriage, will their previous stances be compared to those of Barack Obama in 2008?

This week in LGBTQ news, March 31-April 6

The Brendan Eich news was by the far the most-covered piece of LGBTQ news this past week, so to mention anything else before delving into that feels like saying, “Other than that, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?” So, here’s what happened:

Brendan Eich, Mozilla and OkCupid
Ten days after being appointed CEO of Mozilla, Brendan Eich resigned. On Monday, a week after Eich’s appointment, dating site OkCupid greeted Firefox users with a message asking that they switch browsers before visiting the site. In an interview published Tuesday on CNet, Brendan Eich said:

[W]ithout getting into my personal beliefs, which I separate from my Mozilla work — when people learned of the donation, they felt pain. I saw that in friends’ eyes, [friends] who are LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgendered]. I saw that in 2012. I am sorry for causing that pain.

By Wednesday, OkCupid had removed its message to Firefox users, but the next day, Eich resigned.

Hampton Catlin, a developer who couldn’t marry or start a business with his partner until the Supreme Court ruled last year that backers of Proposition 8 lacked standing, had blogged that he and his husband Michael would be pulling their product from the Mozilla Marketplace. After Eich’s resignation, Hampton Catlin wrote:

I met with Brendan and asked him to just apologize for the discrimination under the law that we faced. He can still keep his personal beliefs, but I wanted him to recognize that we faced real issues with immigration and say that he never intended to cause people problems.

It’s heartbreaking to us that he was unwilling to say even that.

We absolutely don’t believe that everyone who voted yes on Prop 8 is evil. In fact, we’re sure that most of them just didn’t understand the impact the law would have. That’s why so many people have changed their mind in 4 short years – because they saw the impact and pain that the law caused to friends and family members.

People think we were upset about his past vote. Instead we were more upset with his current and continued unwillingness to discuss the issue with empathy. Seriously, we assumed that he would reconsider his thoughts on the impact of the law (not his personal beliefs), issue an apology, and then he’d go on to be a great CEO.

The fact it ever went this far is really disturbing to us.

Friday, the National Organization for Marriage called for “Americans to remove the web browser Mozilla Firefox from their personal computers to protest the company forcing out its CEO over his support of Proposition 8.” NOM President Brian Brown said, “This is a McCarthyesque witch hunt that makes the term ‘thought police’ seem modest. We urge all consumers to remove Mozilla’s Firefox web browser from their computers as a sign of protest.”

For more context:
*Brendan Eich Steps Down As Mozilla CEO [The Mozilla Blog]
*OkCupid’s Firefox protest refreshingly innovative [The Boston Globe]
*Gay marriage, Mozilla’s Brendan Eich, and the role of a CEO [The Los Angeles Times]
*The Hounding of a Heretic [Andrew Sullivan, The Dish]
*Dear Andrew Sullivan, ‘Left-Liberal Intolerance’ Did Not Bring Down Mozilla’s CEO [Michelangelo Signorile, HuffPost Gay Voices]
*The New Gay Orthodoxy [Frank Bruni, The New York Times]
*Quinn: Brendan Eich, Mozilla’s former chief executive, needed to tell us more [San Jose Mercury News]

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In case you missed it, here are some of the OTHER biggest news pertaining to LGBTQ issues to come out of the last week:

Judge struck down part of Ohio gay marriage law
A federal judge said Friday that he will order Ohio to recognize out-of-state gay marriages. Judge Timothy Black made the announcement in federal court in Cincinnati following final arguments in a lawsuit that challenged the constitutionality of the marriage ban. He said he will issue the ruling on April 14. This would only pertain to marriages performed out-of-state, and would not force Ohio to perform same-sex marriages.

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Mississippi Religious Freedom Restoration Act
Mississippi governor Phil Bryant signed the Mississippi Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which supporters said would protect religious freedoms but opponents thought could open the doors to discrimination against gays and lesbians. The bill has been compared to similar legislation that was passed in Arizona earlier this year before ultimately being vetoed by Governor Jan Brewer.

For more context:
*Melissa Harris-Perry’s letter to Phil Bryant about putting rights in God’s hands [MSNBC]

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Alabama representatives vote for US constitutional ban on gay marriage
The Alabama House of Representatives Wednesday approved a resolution calling for a convention to put a same-sex marriage ban in the US Constitution. Representative Patricia Todd, Alabama’s first openly gay legislator, said on the House floor, “I respect your opinion about the way I live my life and who I love, as I respect yours. I am appalled that this chamber would have resorted to something like this to make a point.”

The concept of an amendment to the US constitution to ban same-sex marriage is not new. Two days after the US Supreme Court issued its rulings on the Defense of Marriage Act and Proposition 8 in June 2013, Representative Tim Huelskamp of Kansas, along with 28 other Republican members of the House of Representatives, proposed the Marriage Protection Amendment, which would amend the US constitution to define marriage as between a man and woman only. In February 2004, President George W. Bush announced support for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

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Five years of gay marriage in Iowa
Thursday was the fifth anniversary of the day that Iowa’s Supreme Court legalized gay marriage in a unanimous decision that made Iowa the third state — and the first in the Midwest — to allow same-sex couples to wed.

For more context:
*2009 Iowa ruling seen as gay-marriage harbinger [USA Today, The Des Moines Register]
*Iowa gay marriage ruling a turning point for justices [USA Today, The Des Moines Register]
*Same-Sex Marriage in Iowa at Five Years: Is The Trend Towards Acceptance? [KCRG]

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Gay Boy Scout leader removed from troop
The Boy Scouts of America removed an openly gay troop leader in Seattle, saying he made an issue out of his sexual orientation. The organization told Geoff McGrath in a letter Monday it “has no choice” but to revoke his registration after he said he was gay while being profiled by NBC News. The BSA has allowed gay scouts to participate in the organization since Jan. 1 of this year.

For more context:
*‘Extremely Disappointing’: Scouts Boot Openly Gay Troop Leader [NBC News]