[Vol. 41] LGBTQ+ Origins: The Lightning Round [Part 1?]
Answering my own burning questions about queer history, lightning style.
Hello! It’s Monday, and so marks yet another beginning to the week where I strongly consider starting a nationwide petition to make the weekend a day longer.
Friday to Monday. Or Thursday to Sunday. Either way, we need that sweet, sweet extra day.
But I digress.
I’ve had my coffee, I’m semi-awake, and I’m so, so looking forward to two awesome podcasts coming your way in the next two weeks :) !
In the meantime, I figured I’d embody the true spirit of Monday and stop procrastinating.
I have so many questions about LGBTQ+ history that I genuinely never realized I still don’t know the answer to. From basic stuff, like where the rainbow flag came from, to more complex issues, like how our modern culture got to be so homophobic, I want to know all of it.
Of course I quickly realized that to know “all of it” I’d have to hop over to grad school for a degree in queer studies, somehow develop a photographic memory, and dabble in just a smidge of time travel. So, lacking a decent time machine and the will to ever go back to higher education, I’ve decided to settle for the next best thing (or the 14th best thing – it’s somewhere on the same list anyway).
Today I’m going to be answering 3 very random burning questions about LGBTQ+ history – lightning round style.
I know, three doesn’t seem like a lot, but I realized very quickly that if I chose any more I’d have the longest newsletter ever on my hands. So maybe this’ll be a re-occuring series that pops up every now and then.
*I might even ask you guys to send me your burning questions over Instagram next time, if we’re into that idea.
Ok, let’s get answerin’.
1. Where did the rainbow flag come from?
The iconic rainbow flag was woven into life in 1978 – way later than I would’ve thought, honestly.
Before then, the gay liberation movement was primarily using the infamous pink triangle as a symbol of their queerness. While a pink triangle sounds cute, it turns out it was the same symbol the Nazi’s used to identify (and promptly persecute) homosexuals.
Yikes. Needless to say, it was time for a rebranding effort.
Harvey Milk, a pioneer in the fight for gay rights and one of the first out gay elected officials in the U.S., saw the need for that rebranding as well (duh) and enlisted Gilbert Baker to do the job. Baker, a fellow gay-rights activist and drag performer, was chosen, apparently, because he’d started talking about the need for a unifying flag for the queer community years before Milk approached him.
As the story goes, the different colors of the flag are meant to represent the diversity of the LGBTQ+ community.
It originally came in eight colors - pink for sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, turquoise for art, indigo for harmony, and, last but not least, violet for spirit.
Since 1978, the flag has split into tons of different iterations, recognizing both the unique individual communities that exist under the LBGTQ+ umbrella, as well as the community’s racial diversity - check some of em’ out here.
2. Where did the acronym ‘LGBTQ+’ come from?
When I was growing up, I always felt like the LGBTQ+ acronym was constantly adding letters – as if it were some living, physically-growing thing.
Turns out, that’s pretty in line with the acronym’s history.
Basically, the acronym developed as more and more members of the community began defining themselves.
Like I highlighted in Vol. 17 of the newsletter, the use of the word “gay” to refer to people attracted to the same sex wasn’t popularized until the 1950s. So that’s when we got our ‘G’. Obviously, not enough to make an acronym – yet.
We won our ‘L’ in the 1970s, when lesbian women adopted the term to differentiate themselves from the gays (which is exactly the same kind of thinking that lead to the creation of so many new, specific pride flags).
Eventually, we got out ‘B’ for bisexual (apparently popularized in the 90s) and then our ‘T’ for transgender thereafter. As far as I can tell, the speed of growth of the acronym seemed to accelerate as people began feeling more comfortable defining their unique identities.
Today, the most widely-used form of the acronym is probably still LGBT.
It’s also the hashtag with the most uses on Instagram too, by the way.
Personally, I use LGBTQ+ because …
1) It includes the more fluid umbrella term ‘queer’ that fits more comfy for people like myself (see a short, solid definition of the term 'queer’ here)
2) The ‘+’ makes it more manageable than alternative long forms like LGBTQQIAAP. No disrespect to anyone in the queer community, but that’s a whole lot of letters to write out every time.
3. What was the first country in the world (in modern history) to legalize gay marriage?
The Netherlands! (Get it? A dutch oven?)
God, you gotta Iove those northern European countries for their continued progressive vision. Like damn! America, take notes babe.
Ok. Anyways. I digress (again, and many more times to come).
It wasn’t so much the country that shocked me in this answer, but the year.
The Danish were the first to grant same-sex unions legitimacy and virtual equality under the law – the first in the entire modern world, mind you – in 1989.
Folks, that’s only 32 years ago, and it wasn’t even real marriage equality!
Nope, marriage equality – recognizing a same-sex union as an actual marriage under the law – didn’t grace this green Earth until 2001.
And *surprise, surprise* it was also in the Netherlands!
Maybe it’s time I planned a trip to visit those gay-loving Dutch ;)
MONDAY 05/10 – Biden Administration Erodes Trump’s Anti-LGBTQ+ Legacy
I’ve written about Trump and his many attacks on the queer community before. In fact, I wrote an article specifically on the Trump administration’s affront on LGBTQ+ healthcare protections – inspired by my own awkward experience at the doctor’s office …
While “attacks” may sound dramatic to some, there really isn’t any other word for the kind of anti-LGBTQ+ policies Trump put his signature to in his four years in office. They’ve had serious ramifications for the queer community.
Want a list? Well, thankfully, GLAAD did the work of making one.
Anyways, from the early days of his presidency onwards, it’s been a breath of fresh air (to say the least) to see the Biden administration undo some of that damage. *
*Although I realize the damage it’s done on the individual level in many cases cannot be undone, unfortunately.
During his literal first day in office, Biden signed an executive order that enacted “the most far-reaching federal protections for LGBTQ+ people yet” across health care, housing and education, according to NPR.
Now, the Biden administration has moved further on health care discrimination.
Unlike the Trump administration, who tried to push a ruling that protections against sex-based discrimination only applied to biological males and females and not to the greater LGBTQ+ community (a ruling that the Supreme Court swatted down three days later in the landmark Bostock vs. Clayton County case), Biden and his team have reinstated Obama-era guidance.
With the Biden administration’s latest reversal, LGBTQ+ folks can no longer be denied healthcare on the basis of religious exemptions under the law.
That means whether your religious beliefs align with the idea that all human beings should be given equal rights & protections or not, you can no longer deny service to anyone, regardless of their identity.
And that’s some good news for your Monday :)
And that was That’s Gay, Volume 41.
See you in Volume 42, folks!
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