This is the LGBT Flag

Pride. Day 1.

I love driving through my gay-friendly neighborhood and seeing dozens of rainbow flags hanging from the porches… oftentimes flying alongside our American flag. As many of us in the gay community have traded our clubbing days for Saturday night dinners at home with our (now legal) spouses, flying these flags affords our LGBT community some visibility which we would otherwise not have. These flags now scream out “We’re here. We’re Queer. Can you keep it down, Sweetie, this is a residential neighborhood.”

But I have a pet peeve. Most of the flags flying in my town and in gay bars across the country are not really the LGBT flag that was born out of the PRIDE movement, but rather just a rainbow flag that anyone can purchase on amazon.com by searching “Gay Flag”. The most identifiable difference between the LGBT flag and just a plain rainbow flag is the presence of the pink stripe, which was included in the original LGBT flag designed in 1978 by Gilbert Baker. Apparently, manufacturers find it more efficient to remove the pink stripe, because it makes the flag more marketable to consumers who have no idea what the flag signifies, and just happen to like rainbows.

I guess the reason this bothers me so much is because the pink stripe stands for “sexuality” which is an important aspect of the gay culture that should not be casually omitted. Rejecting the puritanical demonization of sexuality is something that is important to our culture, and we shouldn’t be so quick to omit it. The pride movement was born out of a need to say that we are not ashamed of our sexuality. So I feel it should stay in our flag. Are we more than our sexuality? Of course. But it is part of our “queerness.”

I also must admit that many of my gay friends (of a certain age) and I went through a period where we rejected this flag and instead adopted the HRC flag and bumper stickers as our signifiers of choice. We were the generation who embraced minimalism and rejected camp. The HRC Flag was perfect. And if I’m being honest, it also helped ease our transition to homosexuality. As the world was catching on to what the rainbow flag meant, the HRC flag allowed a bit more discretion. Coming out is a sensitive issue and we were young. We didn’t want to be perceived as one of those “old queens” at the bar with their rainbow pins and Rip Taylor coiffes.

Now that I’ve become one of those old queens at the bar, I’ve turned the corner and have a new-found appreciation for the original LGBT flag, and fly mine proudly each year, starting on June 1 throughout the summer. It’s sort of my own private apology for the self-loathing judgemental shame that I projected onto so many of the older men who had taken the time to tear down walls and open doors — so that I could one day be the flaming homosexual that I was born to be.

That apology doesn’t quite seem complete without the pink stripe.