Pride month is upon us and with that there is a vast increase in the number of rainbow flags people fly to show their support for the LGBTQ community. Pride month is also when a lot more LGBTQ people and families feel safer and comfortable flying the flag for themselves.
Over the years, there have been many variations on the rainbow pride flags, as well as other flags for specific sexualities and gender identities such as the bisexual or transgender flags. The rainbow flag is probably the most recognizable even with all of the changes to the flag since its introduction as a symbol for the LGBTQ community in 1978.
The original pride flag was created by Gilbert Baker and his team, tasked by Harvey Milk to create something for LGBTQ people to use to show their pride and community. The flag made its public debut with two flags at the 1978 Gay Freedom Day Parade in San Francisco, with eight colors and taking inspiration from various hippie movement motifs from the 1960s.
Each color had a specific meaning – hot pink for sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, turquoise for magic, indigo for serenity, and violet for spirit. Demand for the flags rose later that year after Milk’s assassination, but the increased demand was difficult to accomodate because pink and turquoise dyes were harder to find and more expensive to produce. This led to the more common, and more widely know version with just six colors – red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple.
Since the 1980s, the rainbow flag grew in popularity and saw some other additions, such as reclaiming symbols used against the LGBTQ community during World War II such as the black triangles, a black stripe to honor members of the community lost to the AIDS epidemic, or even regional changes depending on city or state. Other symbols like the pink triangle also used during World War II were often used as their own flag on a white or black background.
In the 1990s and early 2000s other communities started creating their own pride flags to promote their own pride in their identities.
In 2017 the rainbow flag saw two major variations. The first was a new flag made by Gilbert Baker, 40 years after his original flags were made. His version added a lavender stripe, symbolizing diversity, above the hot pink stripe. The other was made in Philadelphia, which added a black and brown stripe above the red stripe to symbolize people of color in the LGBTQ community. The Philadelphia pride flag gained popularity and in 2018 a new flag was created by Daniel Quasar bringing in elements of the Philadelphia flag and the transgender pride flag. This new flag kept the six-stripe style and added a chevron on the left side with the trans flag colors (white, light blue, pink) and the black and brown colors from the Philadelphia flag. These additions were to bring awareness for the trans community, people of color, and people living with or have been lost to HIV/AIDS. A few years later in 2021, Valentino Vecchietti added the intersex pride flag, a darker yellow with a dark purple circle in it, to the chevron of the progress pride flag. This version of the progress pride flag is also the one the LGBTQ Center has.
The changes made to the flag have all come from a place of wanting to highlight a community or members of a community. Those smaller communities are often minorities within a minority, and that comes with additional stressors. There has been increasing rhetoric and even laws targeting transgender people as dangerous, deceptive or mentally ill. Often, this rhetoric is used to pit members of the LGBTQ community against each other. However, there is pushback from people within the community to protect trans people with slogans like “no LGB without the T.”
In the face of these attacks, it’s even more important than ever to support and stand in solidarity with these minorities within a minority.
New flags are made all the time, but the important thing to remember is that someone flying a certain flag could mean many things, such as being part of that community and signaling to others that they are a safe space, or they could be allieswho wants to let others know they will take the time to listen. New flags are also made out of a desire for representation.
So if there is a new flag that shows up, or if it looks different than you remember, let yourself be curious and ask what the flag means, who does it represent, who is for, can you fly that flag in solidarity? That curiosity will bring a better understanding of what pride flags are, why they are important, and maybe make you feel better about having a flag up year round so that you can be visible in your community.
Mike Doughty is a program coordinator with the Cortland LGBTQ Center.
