A Flag Worth Living For
Introduction
Going forward, we will all have our weird habits and quirks that can be traced back to the COVID - 19 pandemic, though the details surrounding the birthing story of each might be lost to the haze of the moment. For now, at least, I know the origins of this one particular quirk I’ve developed: manually checking the Twitter feeds of specific professors at my alma mater. By ‘specific,’ I mean those who Tweet with a certain sense of self-righteousness that sweeps them up in a singular issue and causes them to ignore the larger picture.
As I mentioned previously, I’m well aware that the decision on the administration’s behalf to open my alma mater to in-person instruction and in-person living for a sizable portion of the student population was going to have consequences. Even under the best of circumstances, there was a serious risk, and this was not the best of circumstances. Plenty of mistakes were made, and certain inevitabilities were not accounted for. Given the insular nature of my school, it had a pretty decent shot of making things work, but they didn’t. So for months, I lived with the omnipresent the dread of potential death that came with other’s terrible decisions.
I was equally aware that there were certain faculties members who were incredibly vocal about their position relative to this opening while being the type to lose sight of other details. Which is to say, had there been any deaths in their department, they would have announced it long before it would have been socially acceptable to do so. At this juncture, I should clarify that I only searched through official channels in the beginning, but then the reported numbers got higher, and the trust I once had in the university administration--who, let me remind you, were given a training-wheels-esque situation and still botched it--was worn out. Honestly, the only good thing about anyone being recklessly loose-lipped when taking advantage of a tragedy was that I could seemingly trust them more than the official reporting channels.
However, this professor’s Tweets about the campus Covid situation were few and far between (though always self-serving). What I did see in spades, however, was the same ‘moral’ grandstanding that they did pre-pandemic, which included a not-so-subtle skepticism about the LGBTQ+ movement, flags included. And one of the flag-based Tweets in particular stuck with me.
Now, it should be no surprise to you that I’m not going to link to this Tweet in question. For one, having been on YouTube during the 2010s I’ve seen that, whether or not harassment is explicitly discouraged, it usually happens anyway. And that harassment seldom changes minds or improves behavior but gives additional reason for people to cling to this version of themselves whether it is an alter ego, a professional persona, or some other form. On the other hand--and the hand that I think is more important--this professor is linked to my alma mater, which links back to me, and that’s the sort of thing I’m rather eager to avoid. In other words, there’s the depersonal reason born from a cynical view of human nature and the lack of productivity of social shaming and the personal reason that has real bearing on me and the potential for a great deal of misery on my part.
A display of some (not all) of the various flags within the LGBTQ+ community from Twitter user @ct_la - https://twitter.com/ct_la/status/1134836202316500993?s=20
But regardless, I’m sure you’ve seen versions of this Tweet in question: in which someone takes an infographic of all the various Pride Flags--flags that represent various groups within the larger LGTBQ+ community--and takes the variety as a sign of internal division within the movement. Perhaps they imply that this division will inevitably lead to the sort of infighting that precedes irrevocable and destructive divisions amongst a group. Regardless, attention is brought to a perceived fracture within the community and what that fracture could signify in a pessimistic sense.
Now, when you see one of those Tweets or commentaries, diving deeper into that person’s ideologies or beliefs will reveal that--in all likelihood--they do not understand all that the various Pride Flags represent nor do they even understand the social purpose of even the original Rainbow Flag and are superimposing their more patriotic-centric views on flag interpretation despite the fit being less than ideal. In fact, they likely cannot see that incongruence. But if you dive into the replies of those Tweets, you’ll see that this person is not alone in their thought process. And for someone who needs to keep a low profile digitally in one of the circles that person runs in, entering the replies with a correction that will likely not be taken in good faith is not the sort of risk I was inclined to take.
Enter this essay: a non-persuasive reply in a bubble where I do not need to so much debunk another’s argument but present my own in the absence of any character limit. In particular, I want to build off of the work done by Tim Marshall in his book A Flag Worth Dying For: The Power and Politics of National Symbols (2016). In this book, Marshall tries to lay out the various meanings and cultural significance attached to various flags around the world. In many ways, readers will come into this book aware of some of these sentiments but unable to articulate them. We recognize the initial wave of emotions attached to the flag of one’s country. It’s effectively a more physical stand-in for the abstract notion of one’s perception of their nation. I say ‘perception’ in that sentence largely to highlight the intensely personal nature of the relationship one has with their homeland. It’s this relationship that gets superimposed onto discussions of Pride Flags where it genuinely does not belong.
Clarification and explanation is the point of this essay. Borrowing from Marshall’s framework, I want to explain what I think underlies the skepticism surrounding the coexistence of Pride Flags and show it in contrast to what these flags actually mean to those who display them. This will mean clarifying how others understand the place and purposes of flags in a more patriotic context--the most common context for flags--then explaining how the original Rainbow Flag diverges from this modern understanding while simultaneously returning to the original purposes of heraldry, and closing with how the spirit of the first flag’s creation made the development of these other Pride Flags inevitable. The short of it is that Pride Flags are more about personal identification and narratives than they are about signalling loyalty.
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The So-Called ‘Standard’ Utilized
While one’s exact emotions for their country, and by extension flag, can be hard to pin-down, we would comfortably say that the idea of ‘identification’ is a fairly key part of it, particularly when approaching this from a lens formed by the American experience. The visuals of the United States flag--be it the ‘Stars and Stripes’ or a red, white, and blue color palette--can be found on almost any product and sold year round, though with added emphasis around certain holidays. In addition, the flag itself is hung outside of a number of venues besides the obvious military bases and government offices. There is an ongoing devotion to it, akin to the stereotypical patriotism associated with the American experience, as if an ongoing entanglement with at least a representation of the United States flag is part of what it means to be an American. And honestly, I should ask what the alternative would be, particularly a practical/day-to-day life alternative. You would be hard pressed to find one. In a nation with as many different regional and ethnic identities as the United States, the flag assumes a special place socially as the “primary symbol of national identity” when nothing else would fit the mold (Marshall, 2018, p 14).
While the United States might provide a more obvious example of the issue at hand, all flags are tasked with “trying to unite a population behind a homogenous set of ideals, aims, history, and beliefs” (Marshall, 2018, p. 5). In other words, the main purpose of flags is most often and most easily conceptualized as a unification point under which members of a nation gather despite their differences. This metaphor calls back to the origin of flags: heraldry or markings on banners to identify participants in the sort of large and messy warfare that happened during the Crusades (Marshall, 2018, p. 5). Chaos of the battle aside, it was ideal to not send your weapons through the armor of those you had an allegiance with for a variety of reasons, and so this ability to communicate identity and allegiance visually from a great distance had its advantages.
This could be considered the origin point of the concept of flags, as Marshall says. Heraldry became a means of communicating social status and declaring noble lineages, which then translated into a way to identify the monarchy of a territory or country and so on and so forth until the flag became a staple of regional designations in Europe (Marshall, 2018, p. 5). From there, it’s just a matter of colonization mostly. Europe’s standards of national identity--in time--became the norm.
Laying out this history, the sort of demarcation subtly communicated by flags becomes a bit more clear. They have essentially inherited the ‘us versus them’ imagery of wartime heraldry (Marshall, 2018, p. 6).
The echoes of those sentiments are still apparent not just in the history of flags but also in the way we conceptualize them. As I said, they serve as a stand in for a national symbol when one cannot be had, which is increasingly relevant in a globalized age. One cannot draw from a shared experience, dialect, or point of pride otherwise unspecified to construct a national identity, a challenge much like you have in the United States. As another example, a history of tension may make unity a strained subject as can be seen with the United Kingdom who have had to incorporate the symbols of what could have been multiple countries had history played out differently. Or maybe there is one distant--or not so distant--point in history that serves as a sort of foundation for a national identity that needs to be ever present in the mind of citizens and can effectively conveyed through symbols. The flag is the point in which citizens of a nation should be meeting. Practically aside, conceptually that is what is meant to serve as, even if this sentiment reeks of a youthful idolization of bygone eras where homogeneity was still largely the norm and the details were more akin to hair splits.
This is the perspective that I think the professor from my alma mater and others who share that sentiment are looking at Pride Flags from. It is a matter of allegiance or of coming together as an ‘us’ against a ‘them’ that you may not currently be in a feud or war with but with the potential for such all the same. And from that perspective--one defined by the potential for conflict--the leap to the disagreeable conclusion is not so dramatic. It’s simply a rehashing of an almost ancient narrative when the rest of the world has seemingly moved on.
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A New Flag, A New Horizon
The Original Rainbow Flag credited to Gilbert Baker(Vector graphics by Fibonacci) - SVG based on this image, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=685391
Towards the end of the book--or at least of my edition--Marshall does include the Rainbow Flag, denoting it as the LGBT Rainbow Flag in the chapter ‘The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, meant to be the catchall chapters for flags that didn’t fit in any previous chapter (p. 265). He begins with a history of the flag, which is a history that feels familiar, in many ways. I mean to say that the original theme of an ‘us’ coming together in the presence of a conflict-inclined ‘them’ returns. But it returns in a more nuanced and complicated state.
As the story goes, the original Rainbow Flag was designed and popularized by an American named Gilbert Baker who initially considered the need for a gay flag of sorts during the US bicenteniial celebration in 1976 (Marshall, 2018, p. 176). An omnipresent flag was on full display given the anniversary but given the state of gay rights in the 1970s--or lack thereof--in the United States, even in San Franscisco where Baker had settled at the time, there was likely something alienating about its constant presence. In many ways, the LGBTQ+ community was part of the proverbial ‘them’ in the ‘us versus them’ dichotomy. They were presented a force antagonistic to what are/were thought of as traditional American values. And while others might have had that thought or impulse, they might have been tempted to play the camouflage game so many before them played. Baker wasn’t inclined to live that way.
This was a man who had settled down in San Francisco only after serving in the army and who had moved on from that to earning a living as a drag queen and making banners for gay events (Marshall, 2018, p. 266). I point this out not just to set the scene but as a lead in to my conclusion that Baker was someone who likely knew and thoroughly understood not just the impact of flags generally but of visuals more broadly to convey a message. Baker wasn’t just unafraid to pursue this road, but he clearly knew what this would mean. He was also friends with Harvey Milk, the first opening gay politician in California who was later assinated by a former politician who was angered by the perceived growing toleration of--not so much the larger LGTBQ+ community--but specifically of homosexuality which seemed to be at the forefront of that movement (Marshall, 2018, p. 266). Prior to his death, Milk wanted this symbol and encouraged Baker to come up with ideas (Marshall, 2018, p. 266). However, beyond that link, Milk’s story is relevant simply because of the reality it demonstrates.
The Rainbow Flag didn’t represent a nation; it represented a community that dwells within nations and that is largely unwanted in those lands.
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Shifting Meaning
The rainbow design wasn’t meant to be a jab at Christianity, a religion whose theology sees the rainbow as a representation of God’s covenant with humanity that there won’t be another Flood on par with the one Noah experienced Biblically. However, if you are not inclined to listen to the LGBTQ+ community, that mistake might be easy to make. The selection of this symbol happened independently. Baker assigned a meaning to each color on the flag. Red was for life, orange was for healing, yellow was for sunlight, green was for nature, blue was for harmony, and purpose was for the human experience (Marshall, 2018, p. 267) Initially, the flag also included pink and turquoise: turquoise was meant to represent art, and the inclusion of pink was an act of reclamation from the Nazis’s use of it to mark homosexuals as a specific type of undesirables (Marshall, 2018, p. 267). From that, pink is the only color with a concrete meaning, and still, that meaning was not enough to carry it past that initial flag due to the difficulty in printing it.
In many ways, the birth of the Rainbow Flag came not just from a need to identify but from a desire to have space or to dwell in a space without being challenged, and the meaning ascribed to the colors suggests this. These are sentiments attached to the basic act of living. You want life, the ability to heal as a means of preserving that life or moving forward in that life, to enjoy the world around you, or to have the literal human experience even without promises or assurances. Compare that to the colors of the United States flag. If my memory serves, the red is meant to represent blood, war, and courage; white is simply purity; and blue represents justice and freedom. One does not need to pull out Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs to see that these virtues are on different levels, and those Baker went with are more--for lack of a better term--basic.
Marshall never explicitly points that out, but he does point out--in my addition--that the Rainbow Flag isn’t a rallying point for outward directed charges or battles so much as it is about survival. In my paperback edition--which I think has the benefit of additions considering all that happened between 2016 (the initial copyright date) and 2018 (the year my copy was released)--Marshall does mention the massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida that happened in the summer of 2016 (p. 267). He uses that point as a sort of anchoring date for this phenomenon when in reality, the flag has always implicitly served a different purpose: being a way of denoting solidarity with and safety for the LGBTQ+ community. It is a way to welcome them, quite literally, into a space with the assurance that their dignity would be recognized if not celebrated.
It’s a step that no other flag has really needed to take as the circumstances surrounding its birth are so unique. The emphasis was not on any ‘us versus them’ conflict node but simply on the existence of an ‘us.’
The story of the LGBTQ+ community had previously been one of dismissal and death, but with this flag, it has slowly shifted into one of visibility and vibrance. Or at least, it now had a collectively rallying point in the struggle to claim space not expel or take over. Isolation became identification. With this emphasis, it becomes more obvious why the other Pride Flags, those for specific identities within the LGBTQ+ identity, have developed. They are collections of smaller ‘us’-es that rest underneath one whole. Each ‘us’ has had to face their own challenges in their own quest to exist in a space of their own against forces that seek to push in upon them, and as such, they have potentially similar but still unique narratives to attach to a colored piece of cloth.
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Key Undertones
At this juncture, I want to make more explicit a point that I have largely left up for some degree of interpretation partially because I recognize that failing to make this point abundantly clear is only going to perpetuate what I see as a problem of misunderstanding. If flags are key in identifying communities, they actually serve two functions but those functions can be lumped together by describing it as ‘marking which team is which.’ Latent in that action is really two actions that seemingly are intertwined but don’t really have to be. To borrow from the more aggressive, conflict-laden language,there is an ‘us’ and there is a ‘them,’ and both need to be defined. We might think that articulating the boundaries of one would automatically draw lines for the other. However, the Rainbow Flag is a case study disproving that classic idea. Out of necessity, the Rainbow Flag focuses on gathering together a community--or an ‘us’--banished out of sight from descrimination from the preexisting ‘them.’
This ends up being the key to understand how so many Pride Flags can not just coexist but thrive in each other’s presence. The narrative is about identification and not instigation.
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Conclusion
Much like the word ‘pride’ has a different significance when talking about the movement for LGBTQ+ rights and the celebrations surrounding its progress, the purpose of a common flag has shifted in this case. And it’s from this shift that the bouquet of pride flags has arisen. For the purposes of a potentially ill-received Tweet, capturing this development would have been--likely--impossible. The shortest way I could have put it would simply have been to say, “It’s more complicated than that.” Because really, it is. This is a different story than what that one fuddy-duddy professor was used to hearing.
Ultimately, much like early war banners, these flags are still about being seen and identified. But recognition--being an act that was denied this group and not one that could be taken for granted--has remained the focus. And the quest for ‘recognition’ is an ongoing one that takes on different forms. If it is about being seen for what one is, then clarification and specification are inevitable steps or evolutions in that process, which accounts for how these flags can co-exist. They are not in competition. Rather, they are developments of the same story.
Works Cited:
Marshall, T. (2018). A flag worth dying for: The power and politics of national symbols. New York, NY: Scribner. https://www.semcoop.com/flag-worth-dying-0