The History of the Rainbow Pride Flag

 
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 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."