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And this year brought another version from Intersex Equality Rights UK, featuring a yellow triangle and purple circle to represent the intersex community, or people born with a reproductive anatomy that doesn’t fit typical male or female definitions.įlags are political symbols, borrowed from the vocabulary of nationalism, with similar overtones of citizenship, belonging, borders. One year later, the Oregon-based graphic designer Daniel Quasar added the trans flag’s stripes as a horizontal chevron to make the Progress Pride Flag. In 2017, Philadelphia’s Office of LGBT Affairs introduced black and brown stripes to the Pride flag to recognize queer and trans people of color. When I was young and newly out of the closet, around 2013, I saw LGBTQ flags for every community imaginable online, including esoteric variants, such as the green, black, white, and grey aromantic flag, and a pale pink and yellow flag for slim, hairless 20-something twinks. The now-familiar six-stripe flag is actually a redesign. Later that year, though, the flag lost its pink stripe because of fabric unavailability at the local manufacturer, and turquoise fell off the year after for the same reason. That earliest iteration included pink and turquoise stripes, symbolizing sex and art, respectively-parts of queer life that the designers thought were worth fighting for. As Pride points out, a plethora of other flags were designed to represent different groups within the LGBTQIA+ community.Since its first flight at 1978’s Gay Freedom Day Parade in San Francisco, the rainbow flag has evolved multiple times.
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Today, there are even more pride flags out there. Here are the meanings behind the colors in the current pride flag: The blue that replaced the indigo now symbolizes harmony. Baker dropped yet another stripe, which resulted in the six-stripe version of the flag we use most often today-red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. According to Baker's estate, that was because when it was hung vertically from the lamp posts of San Francisco's Market Street, the center stripe (turquoise) was obscured by the similarly-colored lamp post itself.
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As excerpted on the website for his estate, Gilbert's memoir, Rainbow Warrior, includes his memory of deciding to make the rainbow flag: ae0fcc31ae342fd3a1346ebb1f342fcb The trio encouraged Baker to create a positive emblem for the LGBTQIA+ community.īaker agreed and he looked to his community for inspiration, specifically those dancing at San Francisco's music venue Winterland Ballroom one night. In the late '70s, Baker was living in San Francisco when he met writer Cleve Jones, filmmaker Artie Bressan, and rising activist Harvey Milk. The First Rainbow FlagĮnter: Gilbert Baker, the man who would create the first rainbow pride flag. Still, activists recognized the need for a more empowering symbol. "Gay people wear the pink triangle today as a reminder of the past and a pledge that history will not repeat itself," read one 1977 letter to the editor in Time. In the late 1970s, the pink triangle was somewhat reclaimed by the gay community.
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Throughout the Holocaust, the Nazis forced those whom they labeled as gay to wear inverted pink triangle badges, just as they forced Jewish people to wear a yellow Star of David. This triangle, however, had a loaded, anti-gay history. Before the rainbow pride flag was created, there was another symbol for the LGBTQIA+ community: a pink triangle.