Hot pink stood for sex and turquoise stood for magic/art.
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The first gay pride flag had eight colors: hot pink, red, orange, yellow, green, turquoise, indigo, and purple. Before the rainbow flag, the gay community used the upsidedown pink triangle used on homosexuals during the Holocaust. The first flag flew at the first San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade on June 25, 1978. The first pride flag was created 42 years ago on June 25, 2020. Yet, the flag has a longer history than the widespread acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community in recent years. It is hard to look around in June and not see the rainbow being incorporated into everything around you to show solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community. Red is Life, Orange is Healing, Yellow is Sunlight, Green is Nature, Blue is Serenity, and Purple is Spirit.
![gay pride rainbow symbol gay pride rainbow symbol](https://static.independent.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2015/06/30/19/Rainbow-flag.jpg)
In addition, the fear of the flag’s erasure has also been massively noted.The 6-stripe gay pride flag is the most recognizable symbol of the LGBTQ+ community. Most recently during the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Health Service (NHS) in the United Kingdom have adopted the rainbow pride flag as a sign of solidarity and support for the front-line workers battling the virus to keep the country moving.Īlthough the thought behind this has been deemed great by many, it is also important to note that it has also had numerous negative impacts on the LGBTQ+ community, such as companies re-branding their Pride merchandise to NHS support merchandise. In Italy for example, the rainbow is used as a symbol of peace, often with the word ‘PACE’ written across the stripes of the flag in white. Hodges case.Īside from LGBT pride, rainbow flags have other historic and political meanings that persist today. In addition, the White House was also painted with rainbow lights when the Supreme Court established the legality of gay marriage nationwide in 2015's Obergefell v. Most notably when the United States Supreme Court struck down part of the Defense of Marriage Act in 2013, the Empire State Building was lit up by rainbow colours. It's used to symbolize solidarity within important LGBT movements. The rainbow is so perfect because it really fits our diversity in terms of race, gender, ages, all of those things."īaker's original rainbow pattern has since moved on from just flags. “We needed something beautiful, something from us. "It was necessary to have the Rainbow Flag because up until that we had the Pink Triangle from the Nazis”. As Baker told MOMA, the rainbow flag is the way of taking these various colours and turning them into a coherent symbol, reclaimed by the LGBT community. The colours within the pride flag now reflect the immense diversity and unity of the entire LGBTQ+ community. Now the flag as we know it is an international symbol for the entire LGBTQ+ pride community and can be seen flying during our most promising times and the ones which challenge us the most! In 1994, Baker created a mile-long version of the 6 colour Pride flag for the 25 th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. It wasn’t until the early 90s that the rainbow flag we know today was truly established as the symbol for LGBTQ pride.
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With now having an even number of 6, the flag could be evenly split to line two sides of the street and was first done so that year for the march in protest over Harvey Milk’s assassination. With the removal of pink, blue and turquoise were then merged into royal blue.
![gay pride rainbow symbol gay pride rainbow symbol](https://blog.britishmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/George_1.jpg)
Baker told the Museum of Modern art (MOMA) "One of the reasons I had to adapt the eight-colour version to the six-colour version of the flag - the one we use today - is because in 1978 eight colours was expensive”. Back in the late 70s, pink dye was prohibitively expensive. The reason for this collapse was solely down to production issues, mostly pricing. The first concept of the flag consisted of 8 colours, each having their own symbolic meaning:īy 1979, the Pride flag had collapsed into the six colours we know today. People knew immediately that it was our flag." LGBT rights activist who attended the event told The New York Times "It needed no explanation. The symbol immediately took a hold with the community. The flag would be used as a sign of pride for the gay community at the Gay Freedom Pride Parade in San Francisco that year. The origins of the LGBT Pride rainbow flag roots back to 1978 when gay rights activist and army veteran artist, Gilbert Baker created the flag for gay city politician Harvey Milk. This short article briefly looks into the origins of the Pride Rainbow so we can all have extra knowledge of our wonderful and caring community! Many of us know the rainbow is the symbol of LGBT pride although not all of us know why or how this was even adopted in the first place. With Pride month just gone, you may have noticed a lot more rainbows around your neighborhood or most likely scattered around social media.