Somewhere over the rainbow

Roughly 24 hours after her nomination to the Supreme Court, Harriet Miers was gracing jumbo-sized print on Matt Drudge’s website this morning. His scoop – really Time Magazine’s, but in a digital age, he got the Internet buzzing first – would be across the World Wide Web before long: Ms. Miers, when running for the Dallas City Counsel, signed her name to some rather pro-homosexual statements. Never mind that this all happened 16 years ago, when the Internet didn’t even really exist, or that she did so as a candidate for ultra-local elected office – it is the day’s news.

What amazes me, though, is not that Ms. Miers’ views on homosexuality are dominating the news cycle – such is to be expected on an otherwise quiet Tuesday. Rather, I am astonished by the images being used. CNN’s website – a rather respectable online news portal – has a front-page graphic of the Supreme Court under a rainbow sky.

I know the gay marriage movement has long used the rainbow symbol – as has various homosexual causes – but I guess I missed the point in time where they legitimately claimed the graphic as their own. I guess I always viewed it as tantamount to the peace sign – any number of activist groups use it on their literature, but it is still for public consumption in various contexts. Now, however, I am quickly learning that the rainbow is just about solely the property of the gay rights movements. When did this happen?

The implications of this are devastating. Students learning about the spectrum of colors in junior high science classes will now come to subliminally associate everything ultraviolet with Rosie O’Donnell and Ellen DeGeneres. Young children watching “The Wizard of Oz” will be forced to conjure images of “Will and Grace.” And next time a father and son go fishing after a downpour, conversation may well turn to Steve Young and Tom Cruise (no, I’m still not buying that whole Katie Holmes thing).

Seriously, though, you have to wonder: in a world of rhetorical association and thousand-word images, was claiming the rainbow as an exclusive symbol a way of the gay rights movement striking a pot of gold?