rainbow ceiling
n. Business practices and prejudices that create an unseen and unofficial barrier to personal advancement for gay employees.
Also Seen As
Etymology
Examples
2014
Chris writes:

I am an out gay man in my late 20s. I was lucky to have liberal and accepting parents that pushed me to excel in school and attend university. I consider myself a successfully "launched" millennial and I've made it my mission to break the rainbow ceiling wherever I work.
—Conor Friedersdorf, “28 Distinct Takes on Gay Marriage and Stigma,” The Atlantic, April 15, 2014
2013
Indeed, so LGBT people face their own glass ceiling, limiting how far they can rise in a given company or career?

Those in the community see it. They even have a name for it: They call it the "pink ceiling" or the "rainbow ceiling."
—John Luciew, “Marriage inequality only beginning of burden for gays,” Patriot News (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania), August 11, 2013
2002 (earliest)
Workers Out vice-president Mark Dolahenty said cases of discrimination against gays, lesbians and transgender workers were not uncommon.

"You hear stories that people are being ridiculed, which is perhaps the easiest to cope with," he told AAP.

"But you hear stories of people being spat on, discriminated against - not just in an open way, but we hear dreadful stories of people whose careers are simply in a dead end.

There's the glass ceiling for women, I suppose we have the pink or rainbow ceiling here."
—Natalie Davison, “Study finds business 'pink ceiling' for GLB & T workers,” The Australian, October 03, 2002
Notes
That was nearly twenty years ago, and the Rev. David Norgard, who now serves as rector of St. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church in San Francisco, has spent much of those two decades quietly cracking the pink ceiling in the Episcopal Church.
—Don Lattin, “Gay Priest Is Cracking Through the Bias Ceiling,” The San Francisco Chronicle, June 29, 1996