Hungary has just passed a law banning LGBT content in schools or kids' TV. The new law means gay people will be banned from featuring in school educational materials or TV shows for under-18s.
Information that the government considers to be promoting homosexuality or gender change will also be banned, together with the adverts of companies and organisations that show solidarity with gay people, if deemed to target under-18s. Campaigners who analysed the legislation stated that the law allows to broadcast TV shows and films featuring gay characters or a rainbow flag only after the watershed. Such a law discriminates LGBTQ people, encouraging hate, but it is also ridiculously hypocritical considering that Jozsef Szajer, a member of the European Parliament representing Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's Fidesz party resigned in December last year from his position in Brussels after he was caught leaving a 25-man orgy (organised also in violation of local COVID-19 regulations).
Viktor Orbán's far-right vision for Europe finds support in other hypocritical politicians with similar narrow-minded ideas and ideals, among them Giorgia Meloni, leader of the Italian national-conservative political party Brothers of Italy. Such a law targeting gay rights is scary if we think that LGBTQ people are vulnerable to discrimination, bullying, harassment, verbal and physical attacks.
Last week a 13-year-old-girl was attacked in Turin, Italy, by a group of bullies who broke her nose because she had dared going to school with a rainbow bag. If rather than passing discriminating laws, governments would make sure that LGBTQ history was part of the school curriculum such episodes may not happen as ignorance breeds fear and fear hatred. If we teach kids in schools the importance of laws, legislations and human rights, why shouldn't we teach them about LGBTQ history?
We should maybe start with the importance of the Rainbow Flag, which is not only a positive symbol of hope and optimism (that gets appropriated by fashion houses and brands during Pride month), but an empowering banner, representing a "rainbow of humanity" and the community's diversity.
Created by artist, activist, protester and performer Gilbert Baker in San Francisco (where he arrived in the early '70s and where he became known for his sewing skills and flamboyant creations including drag costumes and political banners for street demonstrations) and unveiled in June 1978 for the Gay Freedom Day celebrations, it was hand-stitched and dyed with the help of volunteers and friends, including Lynn Segerblom (Faerie Argyle Rainbow), James McNamara, Glenne McElhinney, Joe Duran and Paul Langlotz. "When all else fails, art is the ultimate weapon," declared Baker, and indeed the flag was also a work of art made with 1,000 yards of muslin and 10 pounds of natural dye in eight colors.
Its colours stood for precise meanings: pink represents sex; red is life and orange stands for healing; yellow is the sun, while green nature; turquoise represents art and magic, blue, serenity and purple, the spirit. Two stripes - pink and turquoise - had to be dropped for cost (hot-pink dye was hard to come by) and display considerations, that's how the six-colour design became more popular.
In April 2021, the GLBT Historical Society received an archival donation of a piece of one of the two monumental rainbow flags first raised on June 25, 1978 in San Francisco's United Nations Plaza at the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade. The fragment is currently on display at the GLBT Historical Society as part of the exhibition "Performance, Protest and Politics: The Art of Gilbert Baker" that also features some of Baker's extraordinary drag costumes.
Inspired by the Rainbow Flag, fill your eyes and heart with artworks that feature wonderful colours that might hint at hope and diversity such as Olafur Eliasson's "Colour Experiment no. 15" (2010). Spanning almost a metre in width, this artwork radiates prismatic colours, it is indeed a large circular canvas containing a luminescent rainbow which unfurls outward from a central opening. Part of Eliasson's "Colour Experiments" series that started in 2009, it was created in close collaboration with a chemist who mixed paints that reflect each nanometre of light. The artwork is currently on sale at Christie's "Post-War and Contemporary Art Day" auction (2nd July, London).
Image credits for this post
Replica of the original eight-color rainbow flag design created by Gilbert Baker in 1998 for the 20th anniversary of the flag's creation. Art and Artifacts Collection, GLBT Historical Society
The two original eight-color rainbow flags flying at United Nations Plaza during San Francisco Gay Freedom Day 1978. Photograph by Mark Rennie, courtesy of the Gilbert Baker Foundation.
Segment of one of the original 1978 eight-colour rainbow flags donated to the GLBT Historical Society received from the Gilbert Baker Foundation in April 2021. Photograph by Matthew Leifheit, courtesy of the Gilbert Baker Foundation.
Olafur Eliasson, Colour Experiment no. 15, 2010
Olafur Eliasson, Colour Experiment no. 15, 2010, detail
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