Flying the colours of Pride

As LGBTQ+ History month starts, our Equality and Diversity Manager Elaine MacGlone writes on the history and development of the Rainbow flag.

Image: Benson Kua, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Rainbow flag has for decades been a symbol representing LGBTQ+ Pride.

San Francisco origins

The Rainbow flag first appeared in 1978. Gilbert Baker’s design followed a challenge from San Francisco City Supervisor Harvey Milk, the first openly gay person to be elected to public office in California. The first two flags flew at the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade on 25 June 1978, a few months before Milk’s assassination. Baker asserted that “flags are about proclaiming power”, but also that the gay community deserved a fabulous emblem devised by the community itself – “We needed something beautiful, something from us” .

Other symbols had been used prior to this including the pink triangle, a symbol used in Nazi concentration camps to identify gay male prisoners. Initially intended as a badge of shame by the Nazis, by the 1970s it was being reclaimed as a positive symbol of self-identity, but also worn as a memorial to past victims and to protest persecution and oppression of gay people.

For Baker, the dark and painful history of the pink triangle symbol led him to look for something different. Some have speculated that the flag was inspired by Judy Garland (one of the first “gay icons”) singing Over the Rainbow, but Baker revealed a range of sources ranging from ancient Egypt to the Rolling Stones song She’s a Rainbow. He also identified that the rainbow is a natural flag.

The original had eight colours, and each had an assigned meaning:
Hot Pink: Sex
Red: Life
Orange: Healing
Yellow: Sunlight
Green: Nature
Turquoise: Magic
Indigo: Serenity
Violet: Spirit

Developing an identity

Changes to the original design were initially made for pragmatic reasons. Hot pink was dropped by Baker due to a lack of availability of pink fabric, and in 1979 Baker removed turquoise to have an even number of stripes.

More significant variations have been used over the years, for example adding the pink triangle used by the Nazis or a black stripe added to commemorate LGBTQ+ people who died from Aids.

Continuing to evolve

As society evolves, so does the rainbow flag. In June 2018, Daniel Quasar redesigned the flag to include a chevron featuring black, brown, light blue, pink and white to represent people of colour, trans people, people living with HIV/AIDs and those who have been lost. Known as the Progress Pride Flag, inclusion and progress within the community is at the heart of this design.

Progress Pride Flag:

In 2021 a further version of the Progress flag was shared by Valention Vecchetti of Intersex Equality Rights UK, this time including a yellow triangle and purple circle to represent the intersex community.

Rainbow colours as a symbol of LGBTQ+ activism and protest

In places where the flag is banned the colours of the flag have also been used to create “hidden flags" to express support for gay rights and diversity. The colours are individually displayed by people – for example through their clothing – so when they gather the flag is still represented. One example was in 2018 during the football World Cup in Russia where six activists wore football shirts representing the Rainbow flag colours.

Other Pride flags

The popularity of the flag has led to the creation of a number of striped symbols to represent various identities in the LGBTQ+ communities . Some which you may have seen include the following

Bisexual Pride flag:

Created in 1998 by Michael Page.

Transgender flag:

Designed by Monica Helms in 1999.

Ally Pride Flag:

This flag allows allies to actively demonstrate their support for the LGBTQ+ community.

These are only a few of the many variations and colour combinations in existence. Each one allows many different and diverse communities to represent and express their identity.

So why fly the flag?

As Gilbert Baker said himself, "what the rainbow has given our people is a thing that connects us. I can go to another country, and if I see a rainbow flag I feel like that’s someone who is a kindred spirit or [that it’s] a safe place to go. It’s sort of a language, and it’s also proclaiming power."