While this groups has felt countless hardships and open discrimination, a shared soul supported by family, friends, and allies allows LGBTQ+ individuals to continue to thrive. Finally, the royal purple showcases the determined spirit of the queer community. These colors demonstrate the strong voices of the LGBTQ+rising up against hatred and bearing their hearts through music, theater, and traditional art. The blue or turquoise in this flag may represent the importance of art or signify growing harmony. Same-sex attraction is found in over 1,000 animal species, highlighting the natural roots of the gay community ( Imperial). This area of the flag is meant to inspire us as the sun symbolizes light and hope for a better future. According to Baker, the yellow stripe depicts the warm rays of sunlight. Whether rising up from internal struggles or assisting others with coming out, this experience is felt by many LGBTQ members. Orange stands for healing, a difficult process many queer individuals must go through due to widespread homophobia and discrimination.
Like the blood which flows through each of our veins, this color ties the community together and illustrates our similarities. Firstly, red symbolizes life for LGBTQ individuals. Each section stands for an integral part of the gay community. “Our oppressors, our enemies if you will, the people who are trying to stop us, are formidable with their religions and their laws and their hatred.”īaker now resides in New York, where he’s penning a book about his experience as the creator of the Rainbow Flag.Originally made with eight stripes, Baker soon modified the pride flag to showcase six brilliant colors of the rainbow. “Let’s remember that in 80 countries it’s still illegal to be gay and in ten countries or so it’s a death penalty,” he told CBS. The Rainbow Flag is like other flags in that sense, it belongs to the people.” And indeed, the flag is in the public domain, thus enabling infinite commercial reproduction on everything from beach towels to neckties to dog collars.ĭespite the progress the LGBT movement has made since Baker originally created the flag in the 1970s, he said the community still has much work ahead. The best-known, six-stripe version of the rainbow pride flag was established in 1979, and still assigns a meaning to each color: red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, blue for harmony and purple for spirit. The color pink was not widely available for commercial use at the time, so it was dropped - as, eventually, was indigo - to give the flag an even six stripes.Īlthough Baker’s design that has seen consistent recognition and served as a worldwide symbol of the LGBT movement, he said flags are “something that everyone owns and that’s why they work. The current, six-stripe flag still assigns a meaning to each color.
So Baker set to work, originally producing a version of the flag with eight stripes, each color with a distinct meaning: pink for sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, blue for art, indigo for harmony, and violet for the human spirit. ( PHOTOS: LGBT Pride Celebrations Around the World)
That really fit us as a people because we are all of the colors. “It’s beautiful, all of the colors, even the colors you can’t see. “The rainbow is a part of nature and you have to be in the right place to see it,” Baker told CBS. Hoping to represent diversity and acceptance, Baker soon settled on the image of a rainbow. Given Baker’s influential role in the gay community, in 1978 the San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Pride Parade commissioned him to design a new symbol that could be used year after year. He eventually befriended Harvey Milk, the city’s first openly gay elected official. After being discharged from the Army during the Vietman War, Baker settled in San Francisco, where he taught himself to sew and soon began crafting banners for gay marches and events, CBS Chicago reports. Follow is Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender pride month, and the rainbow flag - that iconic symbol for gay pride - is flying from Athens to San Francisco to Brazil.Įnter artist Gilbert Baker, the man who first came up with the flag’s design some 34 years ago.