Billy Porter is bored of wearing the LGBTQ rainbow flag

---

He’s over the rainbow.

Billy Porter wore the ubiquitous rainbow colors as a sash as he lead the Pride parade through Manhattan on Sunday as one of its grand marshals. But he says he’s getting bored of the multi-colored motif.

“I’m trying to find a rainbow without being the rainbow. I’m sort of over the rainbow but I like the rainbow. It’s a love-hate relationship with the rainbow, with the colors,” the actor and activist told Pvnew.

“Because we have [had] to wear it for so many years,” he added, “It’s like, ‘Damn, can we wear something else now? Do I have to wear the colors? Can I just show up in something cute?”

It has not always been so.

In 2019 the “Pose” star stole the show at the Pride parade when he dressed in a custom high-necked Christian Siriano gown made from a rainbow of tulle fabric. (He was also among the grand marshals then, but on that occasion as a member of the cast of “Pose” which was serving collectively as a grand master. This time around he was doing the job solo).

According to the LGBTQ History Project, the famous flag was designed in San Francisco for the Gay Freedom Day Parade in June 1978.

The Tony winner, 53, also told us that the annual event must return to its roots as a show of strength. Porter told us he first attended Pride back in 1989 and that it has become “a big party.”

But, amid a swath of new anti-LGBT legislation across the US, and “we need to get back to the protest.”

“When I joined the movement, Pride was about protest,” he said, “Then for many years we worked and achieved our goals. But now the party took over and now we got to get back to the protest.”