Yesterday I posted about rainbows, and I always wondered how the
Rainbow flag become a symbol of LGBTQ pride? June has long been recognized as
LGBTQ Pride Month, in honour of the Stonewall riots, which took place in New
York City in June 1969. During Pride Month, it is common to see the rainbow
flag being proudly displayed as a symbol of the LGBTQ rights movement.
It goes back to 1978, when the artist Gilbert Baker, an
openly gay man and a drag queen, designed the first rainbow flag. As he said in
an interview, “… A flag really fit that mission, because that’s a way of
proclaiming your visibility or saying, ‘This is who I am!’” Baker saw the
rainbow as a natural flag from the sky, so he adopted eight colours for the
stripes, each colour with its own meaning (hot pink for sex, red for life,
orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, turquoise for art,
indigo for harmony, and violet for spirit).
It was not until 1994 that the rainbow flag was truly
established as the symbol of LGBTQ pride. That year Baker made a mile-long
version for the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall riots. Now the rainbow flag
is an international symbol of LGBTQ pride and can be seen flying proudly,
during both the promising times and the difficult ones, all around the world.
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