Gilbert Baker talking about the Gay
Pride Flag and its purpose within the gay community.
The first Rainbow Flag was designed in 1978 by
Gilbert Baker, a San Francisco artist, who created the
flag in response to a local activist's call for a
community symbol. Using the five-striped 'Flag of
the Race' as his inspiration, Baker designed a flag with
eight stripes: pink, red, orange, yellow, green, blue,
indigo, and violet. According to Baker, those
colors represented: sexuality, life, healing, sun,
nature, art, harmony, and spirit. In the true
spirit of Betsy Ross, Baker dyed and sewed the material
for the first flag himself. This original Rainbow
Pride Flag was flown to commemorate the Gay Freedom Day
Parade in San Francisco on June 25th, 1978.
Baker soon
approached San Francisco's Paramount Flag Company about
mass producing and selling his 'gay flag'.
Unfortunately, Baker had hand-dyed all the colors, and
since the color "hot pink" was not commercially
available, mass production of his eight-striped version
became impossible. The flag was thus reduced to
seven stripes.
In November 1978, San Francisco's gay community was
stunned when the city's first openly gay supervisor,
Harvey Milk, was assassinated. Wishing to
demonstrate the gay community's strength and solidarity
in the aftermath of this tragedy, the 1979 Pride Parade
Committee decided to use Baker's flag. The
committee eliminated the indigo stripe so they could
divide the colors evenly along the parade route -- three
colors on one side of the street and three on the other.
Soon the six colors were incorporated into the
six-striped version of the Rainbow Pride Flag that is
known today and recognized by the International Congress
of Flag Makers.
Variations on a Theme
There are variations based on the Rainbow Pride Flag.
Some of the most common feature the Greek letter 'lambda' in
white in the middle of the flag and a pink triangle or black
triangle in the upper left corner.
The reference to the
pink and black triangles originates from the classification
of prisoners in the Nazi Concentration camps. The pink
triangle was used in reference to male prisoners who were
imprisoned because of homosexual tendencies. The black
triangle marked prisoners as "asocial" or "work-shy" and was
later co-opted as a symbol of lesbian or feminist pride and
is considered a counterpart to the more widely known pink
triangle. The holocaust memoir Playing for Time
by Fania Fénelon helped
create the belief that lesbians wore the black triangle.
The memoir includes lesbian themes and describes an evening
of entertainment in the asocials' barracks as the "Black
Triangles' Ball".
During the early years of the AIDS epidemic, AIDS
activists included a black stripe onto the bottom of the
six-stripe Rainbow Pride Flag. Leonard Matlovich, an
AIDS activist who was discharged from the military for
homosexual conduct suggested that upon a cure for AIDS being
discovered, the black stripes be removed from the flags and
burned.
On June 22, 1988, Matlovich died of HIV/AIDS related
complications beneath a photo of Martin Luther King, Jr.
His tombstone does not bear his name, but rather reads,
"When I was in the military, they gave me a medal for
killing two men and a discharge for loving one." He is
buried at Congressional Cemetery in Washington, D.C.
Bisexual Pride Flag
The Bisexual Pride Flag was designed by Michael Page in
1988 to give the bisexual community its own unique symbol
within the larger GLBTI/Queer community.
The flag has
three stripes representative of sexual attraction. The
top color of magenta represents same sex attraction.
The royal blue stripe at the bottom of the flag represents
heterosexual attraction. The stripes overlap in the
center of the flag forming a deep shade of lavender
representing bisexual attraction.
The International Bear Brotherhood Flag
The International Bear Brotherhood Flag was designed in
1995 by Craig Byrnes. The colors of the flag denote
either hair color or nationalities of the human race.
Brown hair/skin, red hair/Native American skin, light blond
or peach-colored hair/white skin, white hair/albino skin,
gray hair and black hair/black skin.
The flag was designed
with inclusivity in mind in thay anyone should be able to
find their hair color or race within the colors of the flag.
Gay Bear Culture celebrates secondary sex characteristics
such as growth of hair, as chest or facial hair, which is
typically considered a 'bear trait'.
Leather Pride Flag
The annual pride parade in Portland,
Maine. Go to the 00:35 mark to view a large scale reproduction
of the Leather Pride Flag.
The Leather Pride Flag is a symbol used by the leather
subculture since the 1990s and was designed by Tony DeBlase
in 1989. Quickly embraced by the gay leather community
the flag has since been associated with leather in general
and also with related groups.
The flag is unique in that
its colors and symbols are not given a prescribed meaning.
DeBlase explains this in his own words, "The flag is
composed of nine horizontal stripes of equal width.
From the top and from the bottom, the stripes alternate
black and royal blue. The central stripe is white.
In the upper quadrant of the flag is a large red heart.
I will leave it to the viewer to interpret the colors and
symbols."
