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Colour has long played an
important role in our community's expression of pride. In
Victorian England, for example, the colour green was
associated with homosexuality. The colour purple (or, more
accurately, lavender) became popularized as a symbol for
pride in the late 1960's. And, of course, there's the pink
triangle, first used in Nazi Germany to identify gay males
in concentration camps.
The most colourful of our
symbols is the Rainbow Flag, and its rainbow of colours
(red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple) representing
the diversity of our community.
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 the need of a community symbol. Using the five-striped
"Flag of the Race" as his inspiration, Baker designed a flag
with 8 stripes: pink, red, orange, yellow, green, indigo,
and violet. According to Baker, those colours represented:
Pink: Sexuality
Red: Life
Orange: Healing
Yellow: Sun
Green: Nature
Blue: Art
Indigo: Harmony
Violet: Spirit
colors in colour represent the current colours of the flag
as recognized by the International Congress of Flag Makers
Baker dyed and sewed the
material for the first flag himself, in the true spirit of
Betsy Ross. Unfortunately, Baker had hand-dyed all the
colours, and since the colour "hot pink" was not
commercially available, mass production of his 8-striped
version became impossible. The flag was thus reduced to 7
stripes.
In November 1978, San
Francisco'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 colours evenly along the parade route - three
colours on one side of the street and three on the other.
Soon the 6 colours were incorporated into a 6-striped
version that became popularized and that, today, is
recognized by the International Congress of Flag Makers.
Source: The Rainbow Flag by Steven W. Anderson, appearing in
GAZE Magazine (Minneapolis), #191, May 28, 1993, page 25.
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