What is the rainbow in Genesis a reminder of?
This year during Pride month, God seems to have a lot of rainbow defenders online. But they aren’t getting the Bible story quite right.
June is the time to celebrate the festive Noahic Covenant Month—or so I’m told by legions of Christians on social media who want to “take back the rainbow” from LGBTQ people like me. “The rainbow belongs to God,” many of these posts say. “It’s not Pride month—it’s Promise month!” says another. One of the viral posts even includes a picture of Satan making a rainbow flag at a sewing machine, which is, to be quite honest, not a skill I expected him to have.
There are thousands of these posts, and my husband and I have gotten more than a few chuckles from reading them together. But they all seem to revolve around a similar idea: LGBTQ people—and anyone else celebrating Pride—have stolen the rainbow from God. This complaint is based on a reading of the story of Noah’s flood, recounted in Genesis 6–9. After causing the flood waters to recede, God establishes a covenant with Noah:
And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant that I make between me and you and every living creature that is with you, for all future generations: I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth. When I bring clouds over the earth and the bow is seen in the clouds, I will remember my covenant that is between me and you and every living creature of all flesh; and the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all flesh. (Gen. 9:12–16)
