Gay History: The Gay Pride Flag

The rainbow flag, also known as the gay pride flag or simply pride flag, is a symbol of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) pride and LGBT social movements. The colors reflect the diversity of the LGBT community and the spectrum of human sexuality and gender.

In 1978, Harvey Milk, a San Francisco city supervisor and the first openly gay politician elected to office in California, asked his friend Gilbert Baker to create a symbol for the LGBTQ+ community. Milk wanted to reveal the new design at the Gay Freedom Pride Parade in San Francisco that year.

Baker, a gay rights activist, army veteran, and artist, immediately got to work designing a striped flag with eight colors. According to Baker’s website, each color on the flag had a special meaning: Pink represented sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, turquoise for magic, blue for serenity, and violet represented spirit. Thirty volunteers hand-dyed and stitched the original two flags.

The popularity of the rainbow flag has influenced the creation and adoption of a wide variety of multi-color multi-striped flags used to communicate specific identities within the LGBT community, including the bisexual pride flag, pansexual pride flag, transgender pride flags. and the 2018 Progress Pride Flag by Daniel Quasar.

( ~ gilbertbaker.com / Reader's Digest / Wikipedia )