Hi and thanks for sharing your appreciation, it means a lot.
Just thought I’d answer this so as not to leave any open tasks in the inbox while on hiatus ;-)
You can find Takemehomefromnarnia’s responses of to the “family values” tweet of January 2014, and to Liam’s reaction to the massive fall out from that incident here and here. And some reactions by LGBTQ+ fans here and here. In short we spoke up about our anger at those tweets - and then it died down. This was before Rainbow Direction, so you can safely say it didn’t mess with our confidence in bringing flags to concerts. If anything, it made clear the necessity of an action like the one Kat was concocting in her head at the time (because the brainstorming between her, Li and Ellis that eventually crystallized the project hadn’t even happened by then)
Liam’s comments in Attitude, had a completely different impact, for a number of reasons. Not talking about his sort-of apology for the Duck Dynasty incident of a year and a half earlier here, but about the “pride flags are about Louis and Harry and it’s nuts” comment.
First of all, it wasn’t an off hand comment on Twitter, but a cover interview for Attitude magazine, one of the biggest publications of our own community, which we had been very excited about. We had high hopes, not in the least because Harry had picked up a pride flag in Buffalo and in Montreal.
Secondly, while the name was never mentioned, the comments about the flags were directly targeted directly at Rainbow Direction, which by then had brought hundreds of pride flags and rainbows to dozens of concerts and which was starting to get quite a bit of press attention for it (Attitude itself had covered us in March of that year and Kat had just been interviewed by MTV).
Thirdly, it didn’t recognize Rainbow Direction for what it was, a project meant to support LGBTQ+ fans which deliberately stayed out of the shipping wars, and it explicitly framed RD as a shipping thing, painting it as nuts.
It was a very harmful comment to the LGBTQ+ fan community, as it completely delegitimized what we were doing and made it seem disingenuous. It questioned not only our motives behind Rainbow Direction, but every LGBTQ+ fans’ motive in bringing a rainbow flag, a flag expressing their personal identity, to a show - putting it aside as “not really about your identity but about something else”. I still fume when I think about how harmful that was. In essence, the comment called into question whether the people in Rainbow Direction were “really LGBTQ+” (for the record: all of the founders are, almost of all of us involved as volunteerswere/are). In short: in terms of impact, it was a really harmful thing to do, and it hurt a lot of LGBTQ+ people.
The fact that the comment was made in one of “our” magazines, that was asking about whether the change of laws in the US had liberated fans made it so much more hurtful.
But it didn’t stop us, and it definitely didn’t stop us from bringing flags. To the contrary.
- We responded to the rumors immediately and when the interview came out officially, we published a press release to correct the image Liam had spun in Attitude. We also wrote several letters to Attitude to correct what had been said, referring them also to their own article about us from March 2015.
- We immediately rallied to make the next show on tour the most rainbow filled one to date and launched the #bostonrainbowwave action. Two goals, our first #rainbowlights project trying to turn the Gilette stadium into a full rainbow of lights, and to make Boston the show with the most participants bringing rainbow flags (at least on the US side). People could also participate from home and turn their icon into a literal rainbow wave for Boston.
- If you go to the TMHFN archive for September 2015 you will find the many supportive reactions by fans LGBTQ+ and other in response to the Attitude comments and our actions for Boston. It really created a very positive vibe and strong commitment to make the shows even more rainbow filled
- At least six Youtubers made videos in our support after this happened (unfortunately some didn’t understand our no shipping policy so there are some references to Harry/Louis/Larry on one or two posters featured in these videos, but not matter, it didn’t stop people from bringing and featuring rainbows is the message - and unfortunately 3 of them are no longer up but you can see the rest here)
The moderate success of the #rainbowlights action in Boston led to an attempt to organize rainbow lights project for the entire UK tour, some with more success than others, but it’s the Boston action that eventually inspired the rainbow lights projects during SOTT at Harry’s first solo tour in 2018, and the #turnforestrainbow project for Nial’s gig in Brussels that year. And these in turn inspired the rainbow lights for OTB during Louis’ tour this year and #rainbowforlightsup for Harry’s tour this year.
In short: neither incident felt too good and the second one particularly did a lot of harm to LGBTQ+ fans, and to our reputation. Bringing rainbows to shows does feel very good though, and we are going to keep doing it, no matter what.
