Rainbow Flag: The origin, history, and variations
When you are driving somewhere in the middle of the country, seeing a rainbow flag hanging out of a Victorian porch might come as a lovely surprise. In New York City, it's quite the opposite. You will be staggered if you find a restaurant or a store that does not have at least a tiny rainbow sticker glued to the cashier register - especially in June. Whether that establishment is a true ally or just trying to profit over the 798,000 adults who identify as LGBT in the city, the rainbow flag is there to say: you're welcome here.
The rainbow flag has been a symbol of pride for the LGBTQ+ community since 1978. Gilbert Baker created two monumental flags for the Gay Freedom Day celebration at San Francisco's United Nations Plaza. The late activist and drag queen led a group of 30 volunteers, including fellow artists Lynn Segerblom, James McNamara, Glenne McElhinney, Joe Duran, and Paul Langlotz, who stitched and hand-dyed the flags.
"I was a big drag queen in 1970s San Francisco. I knew how to sew", Baker told Moma in 2015. "It was necessary to have the Rainbow Flag because up until that, we had the pink triangle from the Nazis—it was the symbol that they would use [to mark gay people]. It came from such a horrible place of murder and holocaust and Hitler. We needed something beautiful, something from us. The rainbow is so perfect because it really fits our diversity in terms of race, gender, ages, all of those things. Plus, it's a natural flag—it's from the sky!"
Baker's rainbow flags featured eight stripes in different colors: pink to represent sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for the sun, green for nature, turquoise for magic and art, blue for serenity, and purple for spirit.
Later, the color pink was excluded from the color scheme because it was too expensive for mass production.
The two original flags were then stored and forgotten in a community center, where they were damaged by mildew. Two years after Baker's death in 2017, his sister found a portion of one - measured at 10 feet by 28 feet - in his belongings. The fabric was then sent to Charles Beal, the president of the New York Gilbert Baker Foundation, and raised at the New York Pride Parade in 2019, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprising.
New York's rainbow flags
You can visit a mass-produced version of the rainbow flag hanging inside the Museum of Modern Art (MoMa). It became part of the museum's permanent collection in 2015 after the US Supreme Court made its historic decision to legalize same-sex marriage in all states.
MoMa's flag is made out of nylon, measured 36 X 60", and it was fabricated by Lynn Segerblom and James McNamara.
In October of 2021, reversing a decision by the Trump administration, the National Park Service announced that a rainbow flag will also be permanently flown on federal property at the Stonewall National Monument in New York.
Variations
Traditional Gay Pride Flag
The rainbow has seven colors, and the original flag has eight, but apparently, it was easier to produce a flag with six colors, and this version became more popular.
Philadelphia People of Color-Inclusive Flag
In 2017, Philadelphia added brown and black to their flag, representing queer people of color in the LGBTQ+ community.
QPOC Flag
This flag also represents queer people of color and shows support to the Black Lives Matter movement.
Progress Pride Flag
For the past years, this flash has become more popular in the LGBTQ+ community. Its colors include people of color, people who have died from AIDS, and the transgender flag.
Bisexual Flag
The colors of the bisexual flag want to tell you that blue is not only for boys, pink is not just for girls, and there's also another color in between.
Pansexual Flag
Pink for women, blue for men, and yellow for nonbinary and gender-nonconforming people.
Asexual Flag
Black for asexuals, gray for graysexuals and demisexual, and purple representing the community.
Demisexual Flag
It's a variant of the Asexual flag, with the colors having the same meaning.
Intersex Flag
Non-gendered colors celebrate life outside the binary sex.
Transgender Pride Flag
The blue and pink represent boys and girls, but no matter which way you hold it, the flag is always right-side up.
Genderfluid Flag
Pink for femininity, blue for masculinity, white for no gender, black for all genders, and purple for what is in between.
Genderqueer Flag
Lavender for androgeny, white for agender, and green for nonbinary.
Nonbinary Flag
Yellow for genders existing outside the binary, white for all genders, black for no gender, and purple for the community.
Lesbian Flag
Orange for independence, light orange for the community, white for womanhood, pink for serenity and peace, dusty pink for love and sex, and dark rose for femininity.
Polysexual Flag
Green for non-conforming genders, and pink and blue female and male, respectively.
Agender Flag
Green is nonbinary, and black and white are the absence of gender.
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