So what makes a good proposal? Unfortunately for the LGBTQ community, representation and political correctness is not a huge concern of Unicode. Vendors including Google, Apple, Microsoft, Twitter, and Facebook don’t have their say until proposals are approved by Unicode. They are reviewed by a handful of individuals on the Emoji Subcommittee in the early months of each year. Anyone can submit an idea but there are strict criteria for each proposal. Unicode takes submissions from the general public. The journey of an emoji from idea to something you can use in your texts is a lengthy one. So why did Unicode reject the bisexual pride flag? Emoji proposals have a lot of hoops to jump through. A long but successful battle to have trans pride flag emoji was won this year. We’ve come a long way from the days of only heterosexual couple emojis and no gender-neutral emojis. In fact, the organization has paused emoji proposals until April 2021 which could greatly impact the future of LGBTQ emoji requests. Marino subsequently launched a petition in November to encourage Unicode to change their decision. The petition has amassed over 15,000 signatures in the past month but there is still no response from Unicode. Unicode Consortium, the organization that governs internationally recognized symbols, turned down a proposal submitted by tech engineer and bisexual activist Tanner Marino early in 2020.
