A flag for everyone!

LBGTQ Flags 

It was early in the morning and I'm an old man. Even so I was pretty sure I was reading the San Francisco Chronicle, not the Onion, where the graphic above could have plausibly appeared.

The sexual diversity movement is now parodying itself, though it's doing so without any detectable humor. On the other hand, the Chronicle's Tony Bravo may be a talented parodist or perhaps the reincarnation of Art Hoppe.

From the Chronicle story:

The ongoing movement to reconsider, and sometimes remove, some public monuments and artworks has taken aim at what many agree are outdated and problematic symbols: Confederate generals, Christopher Columbus and Junipero Serra, to name a few. But Gilbert Baker’s rainbow Gay Pride Flag?

The present-day legitimacy of the 43-year-old flag, intended to represent LGBTQ inclusion and liberation, is being questioned by some in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood — and in the wider LGBTQ community. With so many different flags now being raised to represent the LGBTQ community, is the original, San Francisco-created rainbow symbol still a banner to unite all, or is it an outdated emblem favored by primarily white, cisgender queer people in need of an update?

Like the Ranked Choice Voting system, this flag kerfuffle is another unintended consequence of the self-esteem movement from days of yore. Every candidate, no matter how obscure or unworthy, must now be ranked by voters in city elections. Otherwise you're wasting your vote and not using the system properly.

And now every sexual tendency must have its own flag! There's even one for guys like me: the Straight Ally of gay rights! If I had a flag pole, I'd run it up there with Old Glory!

Supervisor Mandelman, who represents the Castro district, is quoted in the story:

“There’s a lot of passion about the flag, and there’s a lot of passion about inclusivity and exclusivity in the queer community....Gilbert’s flag flying on Market and Castro is iconic and has been an inspiration to people around the world for decades. And I also think that the other flags that our community has produced are important and worthy and need to be celebrated appropriately.”

But Mandelman, aka Roboprog, would say that wouldn't he? Everybody must be "celebrated," every candidate must be ranked, and every Olympic competitor should get a trophy! Nobody can be left out or left behind to be sad and stigmatized!

From the story:

“In the mid-1970s there were various flags and ideas to represent the gay community,” says vexillologist (flag expert) Ted Kaye, secretary of the North American Vexillological Association. “Gilbert Baker’s was the first and the only one that was broadly embraced and spread like wildfire. It was the community that took that flag and adopted it.” The flag has since become a global LGBTQ signifier.

Okay, this paragraph gave me pause about whether this was a parody. But my bad! Sure enough, there is such a thing as the North American Vexillological Association ("The World's Largest Organization of Flag Enthusiasts and Scholars").

One thinks of H.L. Mencken's essay Where is the graveyard of dead gods? 

Those were the days, when every tribe had its own god/gods, but maybe not their own flags, the primitive bastards.