The next year Baker approached San Francisco Paramount Flag Company to mass-produce rainbow flags for the 1979 parade. The flags had eight stripes, each color representing a component of the community: hot pink for sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sun, green for nature, turquoise for art, indigo for harmony, and violet for spirit. Baker and thirty volunteers hand-stitched and hand-dyed two huge prototype flags for the parade. Borrowing symbolism from the hippie movement and black civil rights groups, San Francisco artist Gilbert Baker designed the rainbow flag in response to a need for a symbol that could be used year after year. Use of the rainbow flag by the gay community began in 1978 when it first appeared in the San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Freedom Day Parade. The rainbow also plays a part in many myths and stories related to gender and sexuality issues in Greek, Native American, African, and other cultures. The multicultural symbolism of the rainbow is nothing new - Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition also embraces the rainbow as a symbol of that political movement. Thus, for the symbol of gay pride, both colors were dropped entirely. Another change that happened was that indigo was replaced by royal blue, a more classic variation of the color itself.The rainbow flag has become the easily-recognized colors of pride for the gay community. Plus, some people did not like the odd number of stripes on the flag with the absence of hot pink. At the time, both hot pink and turquoise were hard to manufacture. However, it lacks the colors pink and turquoise. The gay pride flag is very similar to the first two mentioned pride flags. Paramount flag Company and even Gilbert Baker used this for the purposes of mass distribution and it became widely accepted as the iconic LGBTQ flag. This version of the Pride Flag was created solely out of lack of supply of hot pink fabric. Here are the meanings behind each color of the traditional LGBTQ pride flag: Baker brought the traditional pride flag to the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade on Jand hoisted his flag for the first time. However, it wasn’t until 1978 that the colors of the rainbow officially flew to represent the LGBTQ community. It was said that he drew inspiration from Judy Garland’s song entitled “Over the Rainbow”. As a result, Baker came up with this flag. Baker thought of the rainbow as a symbol for the LGBTQ community after he was challenged by gay rights activist Harvey Milk to sew a symbol of pride and unity for the gay community. San Francisco artist and army veteran Gilbert Baker’s pride flag is considered the traditional LGBTQ flag, with the color pink on top of the normal colors of the rainbow. Listed below are several variations of the LGBTQ pride flag and what they represent.
But of course, you’ve already seen other versions of the pride flag. The traditional rainbow flag has symbolized the modern LGBTQ movement since 1977.
Variations of the peace rainbow flag have the word Pace, the Italian word for peace, and Eirini the Greek word for peace, printed in the center. Protesters got the inspiration from demonstrations against nuclear weapons that used similar multi-colored banners. It was first used as such during a peace march in Italy in 1961. Buddhist Flagīefore becoming a global symbol of LGBTQ Pride, the rainbow flag was a symbol for peace. In this article, we’ll be taking a closer look at all the iterations of the rainbow flag and how it was ultimately used as a symbol of peace and pride not just by the LGBTQ community, but other groups throughout history. However, did you know that aside from representing the escape from binary gender norms, the rainbow flag was also used by other groups and cultures to represent other concepts? Hence, members of the LGBTQ community have come up with variations for the rainbow flag. The rainbow flag is representative of all types of genders, sexualities, and sexual orientations. The rainbow flag is one of the most common symbols of the LGBTQ community today, but it is not as straightforward as others may seem to think.