Since the Stonewall Rebellion of June 1969, the summer month has come to be recognised as the time for celebration of love, acceptance, diversity, and self-pride by a people who have long been marginalised and oppressed for their identities.
And with the celebrations of the Pride Month come the radiating flags lined with rainbow colours. The Pride Flag has been a symbol of the LGBTQ+ movement from as early as 1978. In the last 40-some years, the flag has evolved from being a symbol to a statement as more and more individuals have accepted it and used it to declare to the world their identities and at times, their alliance.
What is the story behind the Pride Flag and what do the colours stand for, let’s find out:
The origin of the rainbow flag
Long before the LGBTQ+ community started being recognised by the colours of a rainbow, the Greek alphabet ‘lambda’ and also a pink triangle were used to represent the community. However, no other symbol has gained such popularity and recognition as the rainbow flag, which is also known as the pride flag.
The pride flag, which has become the universal symbol of the LGBTQ+ movement, wasn’t in use before 1978 when late artist and gay rights activist Gilbert Baker designed and hand-sewed it.
Baker was hired by San Francisco City Supervisor Harvey Milk, who was the first openly gay elected official, to create a new emblem for the city's first Gay Pride Day.
The US politician’s life and assassination and the struggles the LGBTQ+ community faced in the 60s and 70s was depicted in 2008 film ‘Milk’.
Baker decided to make that emblem a flag because he saw flags as the most powerful symbol of pride.
Must read: Explained: The history of Pride Month and why it is celebrated in June
As he later said in an interview, “Our job as gay people was to come out, to be visible, to live in the truth, as I say, to get out of the lie. A flag really fit that mission, because that’s a way of proclaiming your visibility or saying, ‘This is who I am!’”
What do the colours of the Pride Flag mean?
Baker saw the rainbow as a natural flag from the sky, so he adopted eight colors for the stripes, each color with its own meaning (hot pink for sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, turquoise for art, indigo for harmony, and violet for spirit).
Initially the pride flag had eight colours – hot pink, red, orange, yellow, green, turquoise, blue, and violet. However, turquoise and pink colours were dropped as they were hard to find at the time for mass production. The flag has retained the other six colours since then.
In designing the flag, Baker may have thought of the vibrancy of a rainbow but he also thought of meanings behind every strip of the colour – hot pink represented sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, turquoise for magic, blue for harmony, and violet for spirit.
Baker, in a conversation with CNN, said that he designed the flag in a way that it could convey his community’s happiness, splendour, and mightiness.
Must read: Pride Month: A primer on sexual orientations and their meanings
Other LGBTQ+ flags
Over the years, some new designs of flags have been created to communicate specific identities within the LGBTQ+ community.
Transgender persons use a light blue, pink and white pentacolour pride flag. It was designed by American trans woman Monica Helms in 1999.
The pansexual community has adopted a magenta, yellow and cyan flag to distinguish itself from the bisexual community.
Similary, bisexual persons have come to use a pride flag with pink, blue and purple stripes, in which pink represents attraction to the same sex, gender, or similar genders, the blue stripe represents attraction to a different sex, and genders, and the resultant overlap color, purple, represents attraction regardless of sex or gender.
With inputs from agencies
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