A few years back, my lesbian friend was all excited - “There’s a gay bookstore in
[next town over]!”
Well, I knew what she was talking about & had to regrettably correct her. Later,
I was talking to a pastor friend in that town.
Me- “You know the Rainbow Gifts & Books store? Well, L-friend was so happy that your town had a gay book store.”
Him- “Yeah, the lady who runs the store sometimes visits my church. She doesn’t have a clue about that meaning of the rainbow.”
Honestly, it would take me a while to catch on. The first thing I’d think if I saw a rainbow flag was that the owner was Buddhist. It looks like one of the many variants of the Buddhist flag.
None of my immediate circle of friends is gay. This is opposed to my life pre-child, where I was sometimes the token straight person in the house. No agenda or judgements, just the way things are at the moment.
And regarding the separate Bi and Transgender flags, consider my ignorance fought too.
There is no necessary contradiction between lesbianism and femininity. Just stereotypes. I see each person as a unique individual and don’t assume anything about them, I need to get to know them individually first. A person’s exterior appearance might say nothing about their inner character. Anyway, most lesbians I know are neither particularly masculine nor particularly feminine, they just come across as regular women not noticeably different from other women. Nevertheless, I score much higher with women on visual gaydar tests.
Well, really, does the fact of the existence of the gay flag mean that no one else can use the rainbow anymore? Rainbows are nice, people love rainbows, why can’t they jolly well have a Rainbow Bookstore if they want? Rainbows can be symbolic of many things, just like all the other symbols out there.
Just found out that, in addition to the flags inside, the neon Budweiser sign is in rainbow colors too.
But I guess that doesn’t matter if you don’t get the rainbow/gay connection.
Well, gay people drink beer too, right? In a gay-friendly area, major companies market directly to gay people. Watch the LOGO channel, and check out the commercials…
Joe
In much of Europe the rainbow flag is used as a sign of peace. It was especially prevalent in the late 1990’s. I have a few, with ‘peace’ written across them in different languages.
A colleague had some gay friends over from America when pratically every house in Rome was flying their peace flag. They had no idea that Italy was supportive of gay rights…
Years ago I was on an island in the Potomac, a rich little river community, lots of weekend homes for DC people. The Chamber of Commerce apparently decided to dress up the little downtown. Every shop had a rainbow flag.
I would like to think they had no idea, and that someone slipped in on them at a meeting.
There is at least one “racial diversity” flag.
I encountered it in Tokyo at a Native American pow-wow of AIM members (the fun things you encounter in college…) Similar to the flag shown on the Wikipedia page, it’s red, white, yellow, and black but the colors were in a circle and it didn’t have the indian head on it. I’m not sure if that flag exists outside of AIM members though.
I didn’t know these two, but I’ve definitely seen the rainbow gay pride flag before. Though I have to admit, having never been inside a gay bar before, I might honestly ask that question before realizing where I was.
I’m familiar with the rainbow flag. Then again, Montreal has a pretty big gay community (and a kickin’ Pride parade), so maybe that’s why.
Sure, I know what it looks like…the two guys who live next door are flying one on their porch right now! 
They are pretty common around the neighborhoods I’ve always lived in around Chicago. I’m quite sure my parents know what they are, because the parish they used to belong to had a lot of gay couples in it. Used to see rainbow buttons & bumperstickers there all the time.
I’ve also seen that rainbow peace flag that Butterscotch mentioned flying around my neighborhood, but never knew what it was (don’t know much Italian that isn’t food-related!)
Budweiser does allot to market to the gay community. Most gay bars will not carry Miller do to boycotts or general displeasure. with the companies owner
There are plenty of rainbow flags hanging out of windows in my neighborhood, so yeah, I know what it means.
Fruitflies rampant on a field of lavender?
I was at Mardi Gras a few years back. For those of you who have never been to Bourbon Street, beyond the tourist area, there is a pretty big gay area.
My pal said, “hey let’s go down that way”
I told him that that area, wasn’t really, um, out crowd.
He said, well it looks like fun, all those bars have Mardi Gras flags up, they must be ready for a good time.
Well, they probably are ready for a good time, but, well, you know.
He thought the gay flag was a Mardi Gras flag meaning the bar and its patrons were ready to do some serious Mardi Gras celebrating. He lives in California, too. I would have thought he would have seen it before.
I meant “our” it probably was an out crowd.
I live in the Castro, so I’ll go ahead and excuse myself from this one. Here is a related thread. Specifically post #42 onward.
