The ever evolving “pride” flags–yes, there are an increasing number of different flags and a constantly evolving overarching flag–is a wonder to behold.

On the one hand, I find it annoying that everybody needs a flag to symbolize their own niche group. On the other, it’s not exactly a new phenomenon so I have a difficult time elevating my annoyance about it into a cultural crisis that requires comment on its own. It’s just another modern phenomenon that an old man like me grouses about to his friends.

But the constant evolution of the “pride” flag does bear comment, because it actually reveals something noteworthy about the current gender ideology craze. It always struck me that the gay rights movement was highjacked by the transgender movement (what exactly does sexual preference have to do with gender dysphoria?) when they embraced the T within the LGB umbrella. Sure, there was controversy around  each of the categories, but the categories themselves are rather different. What does a psychological condition–a dysphoria–have to do with sexual preferences?

But that is their business, not mine. Except that the growing acceptance of gays in our society has inspired every non-conforming group in the universe in a gold rush, assuming that latching onto the successful gay rights movement is a shortcut to societal acceptance. The result is a constantly evolving identity group and a constantly evolving flag to include every possible deviant behavior.

By now everybody is familiar with the rainbow LGBT flag, which has been around for decades.

Every liberal in America has at one time flown this flag, and you see it on bumper stickers all over the place. It was the original virtue signal, more recognizable even than the Italian man pretending to be an Indian (oops, Native American) crying over the horrors of White trash (literal trash in this case).

A little while back some enterprising gender warrior reworked the flag to include his own and others’ deviation from normal behavior (I am using that descriptively, not pejoratively), and added a few colors to appropriate the growing acceptance of gays. It looks like this:

This is a bit of clever marketing, if nothing else. Find something that most people like or at least are fine with and claim to be part of that group. It’s like joining a parade once somebody got it going and close to the finish line, trying to fool people that you are one of them.

But gender ideology spawns new identities like E. Coli spawns new versions of itself. People now identify as ghosts, frogs, dogs, and various inanimate objects. There is a new oddity every day, and 14 on Sundays. Each demanding recognition and a hug by everybody in society.

That makes flag designing a great business to be in.

Microsoft decided to get in on the game, designing its own version to include what it believed to be the current identities that were “hot” at the moment. Although, as a software company they actually created a page to allow people to keep adding on ad infinitum.

As an older man, (58, so late middle-age, I guess) I assume I would be a graysexual. Who knows? And what exactly is the point?

But what touched off my fit of pique was the new hotness–including sex workers into the fold. Now I know that there is a movement to legitimize sex work as just one job among many, because…well, of course we are. Objections to it tend to be moral, so we must embrace it to show we are all amoral or something.

But sex worker surely don’t belong as part of this category. Sex work is almost always the result of exploitation, often human trafficking, and always exploitative. It is about turning people into the equivalent of sex dolls, objects to be used. It undermines families, spreads disease, and embraces the idea that self-control is a bad thing. It is a long way away from the original idea that gay people are just like you and me.

This flag is offensive on additional levels. It tosses in intersex as a category, as if a genetic deformity is an identity instead of a medical problem. Most intersex people, by the current definition, are almost indistinguishable from people without some variation of the problem.

And sex work? C’mon, man.

Did you know? This year, @lukasberredo adapted the amazing Progress Pride flag versions developed by @TheJasonDomino and @ValentinoInter. This design includes both the intersex flag and the red umbrella. pic.twitter.com/Y5zFLjHlk9

— TGEU (@TGEUorg) December 19, 2022

The original idea behind the Pride flag–as with the flag itself–is pretty much blotted out. This is basically a promotion of deviance itself–being perfectly normal is the deviation from the norm. Pride, ultimately, won its battle for inclusion in the norm by claiming to be a minor deviation from the norm. It said “we are part of the same community”–at least that is what it came to mean.

This is the opposite–and swamps the LGB under the weight of every other identity.

If I were gay, I’d be ticked. When the inevitable backlash comes, will gays get caught up in it?