Gay Symbols

RED - LIFE ORANGE - HEALING YELLOW - SUN GREEN - SERENITY BLUE - HARMONY PURPLE - SPIRIT

The rainbow flag has become the most easily-recognised color of pride for the international gay community.  The symbolism of the rainbow is nothing new -- many religious, political and social organizations have used it for years.  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. Use of the rainbow flag by the gay community began in the late 1970's when it began to appear in the San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Freedom Day Parade.  San Francisco artist Gilbert Baker designed the rainbow flag in response to a need for a symbol that could be used year after year.  Baker's first flags had eight stripes, each color representing an important 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 purple for spirit. The following year Baker asked a flag company to mass-produce rainbow flags for the parade.  Due to production constraints -- such as the fact that hot pink was not a commercially-available color -- pink and turquoise were removed from the design, and blue replaced indigo.  This new, six-color version spread from San Francisco to other cities, and soon became the widely-known symbol of gay pride and diversity it is today.  It is even officially recognised by the International Congress of Flag Makers. In 1994, a huge 30-foot wide by one-mile-lone rainbow flag was carried by 10,000 people in New York's Stonewall 25 Parade.  Many cities - Toronto and San Fransisco being two examples, fly the flag from city hall during pride celebrations.

The rainbow flag has inspired a great number of related symbols, such as freedom rings and other accessories.  There are pleanty of variations of the flag, including versions with a blue field of stars reminiscent of the american Stars and Stripes and versions with superimposed lambdas, pink triangles, or other symbols.  Gay christians often fly a variation of the flag which is superimposed with a cross.

The Victory Over AIDS Flag modifies the rainbow by adding a black stripe at the bottom.  Suggested by a San Francisco group, the black stripe commemorates those we have lost to AIDS.  Sergeant Leonard Matlovich, a much-decorated Vietnam Veteran dying of AIDS, proposed that when a cure is eventually found the black stripes should be removed from all the flags and ceremoniously burned in Washington, D.C.