The rainbow has done a full circle

I love rainbows, they are one of the first things we as children learn to draw and they evoke happiness, well being, joy, a promise of gold and a safe future.

My mother used to make me rainbow jellies for my birthday and I continued to make them for my children. They never failed to bring joy.

I also enjoyed, on my trips to Europe, seeing the rainbow flag flown from homes proclaiming Peace, often with the word Pace (Italian for Peace) written over the colours. That usage was in keeping with my sweet childhood memory.

I was not happy when the rainbow was hijacked by the gay community. Suddenly it felt constrained, no longer free to represent the whole world regardless of race, sex, religion and so on. First designed and launched in the 70s, it originally had 8 colours to represent the diversity of the LGBTQ community, but this proved too hard to reproduce so the standard rainbow colours have since been associated with the movement.

Now whenever I see the rainbow flag I no longer get that familiar warm feeling of universal reassurance and connectivity. It now just identifies a movement. And like any brand symbol, it represents only one particular tribe.

I saw a decorator’s truck with a rainbow flag flying off the back. I wondered at the validity of that to his business?

Was he targeting the LGBT community, potentially distancing himself from other potential customers? It just felt irrelevant to his business. Then I noticed his logo on the door of his truck and it was a rather nice design comprising the brand name, with ‘the painters’ underneath describing, succinctly, what they did. This was further supported with seven fine stripes, tastefully spaced out and justified with the brand name.

It made sense, painters use colours, they are happy colours, the logo was professionally designed, I was reassured at there are to attention. So did the flying flag indicate they were gay? Or were they just displaying their brand colours? Did it matter? It certainly made a point.

The rainbow is powerful and capable of stirring our feelings which don’t stop with this relatively new association.This association has been so strong that students have been banned from wearing rainbows and a Kentucky teenager was expelled from her school after a photo of her 15th birthday celebration was shared on social media. Her birthday cake was multi-coloured and the jumper she wore had a coloured rainbow spectrum across it.

And again, the rainbow is arising, this time it is not for one selected tribe; rather than identifying one tribe it feels like humanity as a whole is identifying with it. Children are creating rainbows, painted, drawn, cut out… and pasting them in their windows across the UK as a symbol of hope in response to the coronavirus outbreak. I am in Melbourne and I am seeing these simple hand rendered rainbows in windows locally.

It feels to me as if each of us is reclaiming our rainbow again and enjoying its birthright, connecting all who see it in one single global dream of hope and joy at the end of a storm.

It matters not what tribe we belong to, what beliefs we have, we are all one.