Consider the case of a confused kid looking things up in school or something similar, someone spots the rainbow walking behind him, since its very different from the normal Google and gets outed.
Outed as being confused? How is this a problem again?
What if a straight kid googled 'gay marriage' just to see what the link on HN was all about and someone saw it? For shame! The horror!!
What if a velociraptor that's allergic to rainbows happened to walk by at that moment and flew into a rage consuming the entire public library with its violence?
What if a bully saw someone looking at a rainbow on the screen and said something stupid and was met with an overwhelming negative response by a large portion of his peers causing him to reconsider previous life decisions?
As a formerly deeply-closeted gay teen, I'm confident that currently-closeted youngsters will consciously avoid performing such a search in a public place.
That's what being closeted is: it's more than just not telling people you're gay/bi/etc. It's about actively managing and monitoring others' perception of you, and the mortal dread of being found out.
Speaking as a formerly closeted person, this is an exact thing I did in school because I didn't want my parents to find out, since they are deeply Christian.
Yikes. I don't think you're saying kids should be ridiculed for investigating LGBT topics at school, or that they should be ridiculed for being perceived as an LGBT person, but that this may be more likely to happen since this draws visual attention to the fact that you're actively searching for a "gay"-related topic.
There are times when I would browse /r/lgbt (please go to /r/ainbow instead) and had to make sure I was logged into to avoid the custom stylesheet because it would warrant far too much attention for anyone walking behind me while using my laptop.
Either way, not sure if you got lumped in with the pseudo-bigots in this thread but I tried to help you out.
Consider the case of a confused kid looking things up in school or something similar, someone spots the rainbow walking behind him, since its very different from the normal Google and gets outed.