How Long Can The NHS And Queer Community Share The Rainbow Flag?
Sophie Harvey, 18, from Greater Manchester, did a double take as she walked along her local high street last month. Three, six foot rainbow letters had been erected outside Bury Town Hall, displaying the word “NHS”. Last year, the town hall hosted a similar display with towering rainbow letters. They read “Pride”.
“Every time I pass the building I get more annoyed about it, especially because it’s the exact same design on both displays,” Harvey tells HuffPost UK.
Since then, she’s noticed a growing number of rainbow flags displayed by shops and pubs in her area, often alongside the slogan: “Thank you, NHS.”
The fact that Bury Pride was cancelled this year due to Covid-19 – along with most other nationwide Pride events – adds salt to the wound.
“I first came out in 2016, and the gay flag became a huge part of my life because it was something that represented me and my struggles, and the struggles that the others in my community go through,” Harvey says.
“Seeing a flag that holds so much pain and passion be used for something entirely different is heartbreaking. It’s not just a rainbow to us, it’s the story of our people and our history.”
Harvey is one of many LGBTQ+ people who feel concerned, and in some cases, unsafe, due to this recent co-opting of the rainbow flag. Another vocal critic is the human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, who has been on the front line of LGBTQ+ campaigning since the 1970s.
“The rainbow flag is a global symbol of the LGBTQ rights movement,” says Tatchell. “As Oscar Wilde once said: ‘Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.’ But to adopt the exact same six-colour LGBTQ rainbow flag for the NHS looks like blatant cultural appropriation.”
Tatchell feels the LGBTQ+ community has been “robbed” of its symbol and is calling on the NHS to “devise their own unique symbol and flag”.
Alongside its history, he believes the mixed messaging around the flag’s multiple uses is confusing – to the...
