The TRUE significance of the rainbow:
And God said,
“This is the sign of the covenant I am making
between me and you and every living creature with you,
a covenant for all generations to come:
I have set my rainbow in the clouds,
and it will be the sign of
the covenant between me and the earth.
Genesis 9:12-13
I have to confess, I get upset seeing the rainbow flag everywhere – especially knowing what God’s Word says it symbolizes. Out of curiosity, I looked up how it originated, wanting to know if it purposely thumbs it’s nose at God.
According to Wikipedia:
The rainbow flag, commonly the gay pride flag and sometimes the LGBT pride flag, is a symbol of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) pride and LGBT social movements. Designed by San Francisco artist Gilbert Baker in 1978, the design has undergone several revisions to first remove then re-add colors due to widely available fabrics.
The original gay pride flag flew in the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade on June 25, 1978. It has been suggested that Baker was inspired by Judy Garland’s singing “Over the Rainbow” and the Stonewall riots that happened a few days after Garland’s death (she was one of the first gay icons). The flag also strongly resembles the ribbon colors of the WWI Victory Medal, though no connection is evidenced. Another suggestion for how the rainbow flag originated is that at college campuses during the 1960s, some people demonstrated for world peace by carrying a Flag of the Races (also called the Flag of the Human Race) with five horizontal stripes (from top to bottom they were red, black, brown, yellow, and white). Gilbert Baker is said to have gotten the idea for the rainbow flag from this flag in borrowing it from the Hippie movement of that time largely influenced by pioneering gay activist Allen Ginsberg. The flag consisted of eight stripes; Baker assigned specific meaning to each of the colors:
My verdict: This rainbow flag absolutely thumbs it’s nose at God’s Word. Was it done intentionally & knowingly? I don’t know.