Don't Tread on Pride Flags

What do Gadsden flags and Pride flags have in common?

- By Scott Shackford

The June forecast calls for plenty of rainbows, regardless of the actual weather. Once a small and highly political gesture of defiance against a government and culture that refused to grant gay and transgender people the same rights and respect as other citizens, Pride Month has become a big, heavily branded celebration of anything connected to any gender or sexual orientation that isn’t conventionally heteronormative.

Some of the rainbow branding veers into the absurd: electric toothbrushes, bottles of wine, CBD oils, hamburgers. Skittles, already rainbow-colored, hilariously decided during 2020’s Pride Month to eliminate all its colors and sell specialty packs full of pale gray candies with the motto, “Only one rainbow matters during Pride.”

That motto isn’t really accurate: There are dozens of different rainbows now. The past few years have seen an explosion of colorful flags allowing ever-more-specific labels for spots on the gender and sexuality spectrums. There are specific flags for lesbians, pansexuals, trans people, asexuals, nonbinary people, kinky people, and more. If you drill down further, you’ll find flags marketed to masculine or feminine lesbians, to specific types of gay men, or to various kink interests. There is more than one flag for asexuals. The familiar rainbow flag itself was revisualized in 2018 to become what’s called the Progress Pride Flag, with additional colors that represent more specific minorities, though the classic version still persists too.