Thorns

I've seen a lot of mogai people expressing discomfort/disdain for the plethora of rainbow filtered icons on facebook, and I don't mean to tell them they're wrong for their personal reaction, but I like it. I'm tired so here's my reasons in dot points.

• rainbows are pretty
  
• I can still see who people are (this is why I never participate in memes where everyone uses the same picture. Too confusing!)
  
• I now know those people are at least basically ok with same sex relationships! This does not go without saying for everyone I follow.
  
• Everyone who follows those people knows it too. This normalises mogai acceptance in general and marriage equality in particular. Since most people I follow are Australian and marriage equality hasn't been legalised here, that's not insignificant. And this is the case even if the people with the filters are doing it because of peer pressure/fashion.
  
• It's nice to feel part of a global celebration of civil rights (yes, of a United States specific event). Especially because rainbows are so festive!
  
• it's a really mild, ambiguous way for me to express my sexuality in a situation where I'm not 100% out.
  
• On my feed at least it's NOT all straight people, in fact I'd say it heavily skews lgbt. And the fact it's popular with straight people means the rest of us aren't unambiguously outing ourselves by using it.
  

I think that's about it! I know there are arguments against it, I'm not saying it's an unalloyed good. But it felt like a lot of people were assuming that the ONLY people who like it were straight and nope.

Here's two contrasting articles about it I came across via Facebook:
More than 26 million people have changed their Facebook picture to a rainbow flag. Here’s why that matters.
If you’re straight you need to stop using rainbow profile pics.