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 Does that make the original Pride flag outdated?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.
GAY PRIDE RAINBOW FLAG SYMBOL PLUS
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.