The New Puritans: How the Religion of Social Justice Captured the Western World

by Andrew Doyle

The rainbow flag for Pride has been through a similarly confounding metamorphosis. It was designed in the late 1970s to supersede the pink triangle, which had been appropriated from Nazi concentration camps as a gesture of empowerment and defiance. The new rainbow symbol was a conscious attempt to distance itself from such dark connotations and express a more joyful and optimistic outlook. Originally featuring eight stripes, it was soon whittled down to a more striking six-stripe version, which was the standard for many decades. With the ungovernable escalation of identity politics and intersectionality over the past few years, various interest groups have competed for ‘representation’ on the flag. The ‘progress flag’, for instance, adds a five-stripe chevron: the pink, light blue and white stripes signify trans rights, while the black and brown stripes represent people of colour; as though the original rainbow was some kind of literal depiction of the skin colours that are acceptable in the gay community. There are now flags for every conceivable sexual or gender identity. These are not necessarily representative of groups that have been historically persecuted, but rather a hotchpotch of neologisms that can be seemingly selected at will like so many fashion accessories.