Thanks for using my photo of the White House lit up with rainbow colors, British Museum (@BritishMuseum) in this blog post, with such a lovely sentiment. As I wrote about it back then, people who saw it online thought it wasn’t real, and we didn’t even think it was real when we were standing watching it (it was real).
You see, if I could tell my young gay self – who was bullied at school for being gay, who told his friends he fancied Posh Spice when he actually fancied David Beckham, who wanted nothing more than to fit in, who didn’t come out to friends and family for years out of fear – that one heartwarming day the big ol’ building full of stuff, at the heart of the establishment, would raise a Rainbow Flag atop its highest point, for all to see in the spirit of togetherness, tolerance, community and acceptance… well, I think my younger self would feel nothing but Pride, and a little less lonely too.
Source: A symbol of pride: raising the rainbow flag – The British Museum Blog
As I write this post I am looking across a street in Washington, DC, where there is large rainbow flag hanging next to a large American flag on a local business, and then I found this blog post and the sentiment was exactly the same. I like how that emotion transcends continents, and why shouldn’t it, we’re all human.
In Washington, DC, we have taken inclusion and visibility further by lighting our streets and painting our crosswalks in the colors of the transgender pride flag. It’s just what happens in the most inclusive city in the world.