I guess I just have the view that if I am turning on the radio, the TV, watching a movie, a tv show, celebrity voices, the state department, etc - and I am seeing the counterculture, then I am actually just seeing the culture.
Seeing a government body virtue-signal by putting up a flag is not the same as the actual lives that queer people live, which varies WILDLY from the norm thus making it counter cultural.
In fact, many queer people force themselves out of the community by living within the norm to feel more acceptance from the majority (counter-counter culture).
Your perception is also very obviously specific to where you live on this planet.
> Seeing a government body virtue-signal by putting up a flag is not the same as the actual lives that queer people live
The same thing goes for anything that could be described as "queer culture". Plenty of queer people have, and want, nothing to do with the groups and spaces that present themselves as "the community".
A given queer person's level of identification with the broader community is of no relevance to the question of whether the broader culture of the community is countercultural. When the culture itself is used as a political tool by a state actor, I no longer classify the culture as countercultural. Rather, I see it as a weaponized mechanism of cultural subversion.
Sure, the hippie movement was branded countercultural. But to what purpose? Note that during the period, the US government was engaged in a large scale remaking of America both domestically and internationally. Domestically, we saw the remaking of immigration policies to no longer bias towards those of European descent, and instead towards what favored macro capitalism (the import of cheaper and low skilled labor). Internationally the US was scaling up engagement in hot and cold wars and no longer considering itself bound to the constitutional provisions for war. Low and behold, during this period, a "counterculture" arises which glorifies drug use, the dissolution of the nuclear family and pushes forward the vapid strain of hyper individualism that we see today. Suddenly the anti-war movement is associated with drug use and degeneracy, whilst the nation's racial consciousness is broken in time to welcome a new wave of immigrants to help improve the margins of big business.
Note that the current "woke" counterculture follows the same pattern. Increased individualism, sublimated racial awareness, dissolution of family, and rampant degeneracy. Meanwhile the state continues its hegemonic march of constant international agitation.
You most certainly were not seeing hippies endorsed by the state department in the 60s. (Though, that we look back on the hippies of the 60s fondly does say something about the direction we've charted since then.)
