If you needed more proof that gay men aren’t in control of things any more – at least where the activist set is concerned – look no further than the evolution of the LGBTQ+ Pride flag. If, as Oscar Wilde once wrote, ‘Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months’, then the new Pride flag is somewhere between a prisoner of war and Frankenstein’s monster: a tortured and overburdened horror; a stitched-together crime against nature. 

What was wrong with the old rainbow flag? Rainbows are happy and beautiful. Everyone loves a rainbow. And that, precisely, was the problem. You can’t strike fear into the hearts of your enemies with a rainbow. Big Gay needed something more militant.

The first edit came a few years ago, with the addition of brown and black stripes, which don’t belong on a rainbow but do belong in intersectional grievance hustling. Then, in from the left side, like a tunnel-boring machine spectacularly grinding away all that harmony, appeared the Triangle of Trans. This new version is what you’re likely to see today gently flapping outside your kombucha bar or pottery studio during the month of June. 

But the queers weren’t finished desecrating the rainbow. The latest iteration allows any sexual identity group in the world to join in by finding a bit of empty space on the design in which to slap their logo. The once joyful and balanced rainbow flag now looks like the dilapidated, bumper-sticker-loaded car of a hoary college professor. 

Let’s be honest, the original rainbow Pride flag was always a little gay, and by that I mean lame. Rainbows are majestic, breathtaking, awe-inspiring when sent from heaven. But a grown man wearing one on a T-shirt looks a bit pathetic, if you know what I mean.

After all, rainbow apparel is for children. How is it that rainbows – symbols of innocence, wonder and purity – became synonymous with the most debauched and cynical of subcultures? Grown men donning rainbows was perhaps a warning sign that this really is a community of Peter Pans. And I speak as one of them.

What’s worse: all this flag-waving has robbed children of the rainbow (not to mention Christians where, in the Bible, it is a symbol of God’s loving covenant to all generations after the great flood). Nowadays, you can’t even dress your toddler in an innocent rainbow jumper without someone giving you the stink-eye as they wonder if you’re trotting off with Junior to the gender reassignment clinic.

The same goes for the brave gay man who brandishes that outmoded six-stripe rainbow banner of yore. Is he a transphobe, neighbours might wonder. The world is engulfed in madness. Let’s hope, like the rainbow itself, this too proves ephemeral.