From Gilbert Baker’s site (linked below): “ The following paragraphs are from chapeter 5 “Stitching A Rainbow” where Gilbert describes the moments where he came up with the ideas behind the creation of the Rainbow Flag for the LGBTQ Community.” The flag has always been for the entire community. The whole point was to bring the community together, to bring us closer. This is great, I don’t like how gay men are represented purely by the rainbow flag, the rainbow flag is the LGBT+ flag It encompasses everyone in the LGBT+ community, not only gay men, and so I think it’s good that we’ve got our own pride flag, now for all types of gay men too, and the design looks really good 2. But it was designed as a symbol of the gay community as used in the 1970s – for all the people now called LGBT+. So yes, Baker’s flag was designed as a symbol of the gay community. So, for a while, gay men and lesbians didn’t have popular, widely used flags for our specific identities as gay men. LGBTQ has been recorded since ’96 and obviously there are now other variations. Because of the centring of (cis, white, rich) gay men in general, due to our world’s generally patriarchal modern structure, society’s image of the LGBT+ community, the rainbow flag from 1978 and its new 6 stripe form has often been mistakenly attributed to gay men in particular, despite the rainbow flag being a deliberately inclusive flag that includes all LGBT+ people. It was only in the mid to late 80s that it even became LGB, then in the 90s it became LGBT. Which technically is true - the flag debuted in 1978, when the entire LGBT+ community was just called the gay community. During this period, he became friends with Harvey Milk.A lot of people claim that Gilbert Baker’s flag was meant to be a symbol of the gay community. He used his sewing skill to create banners for gay rights and anti-war protest marches. After his honourable discharge from the military, he worked on the first marijuana legalisation initiative California Preposition, and was taught to sew by his fellow activist Mary Dunn. Bakers iteration of the flag gives a unique meaning to each color, 'hot pink for sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, turquoise for magic, blue for harmony and violet for spirit,' he explained. He was posted as a medic in San Francisco at the beginning of the gay rights movement and lived there as an openly gay man. The late artist Gilbert Baker is credited with creating the first pride flag, which he designed in 1978 for Gay Pride Day in San Francisco, per CNN. The bisexual pride flag was designed by Michael Page in 1998 in order to give the bisexual community its own symbol comparable to the gay pride flag of the. This 5-coloured (and sometimes 7-coloured. The bisexual pride flag was created in 1998 by Michael Page, to differentiate the community from the rainbow flag and the gay community. History: The word bisexual comes from the Greek prefix bi meaning two.
Over time, demand grew for a flag that specifically represents gay men. Bisexuality: The physical or romantic attraction to two genders. Created in 1999 by gay graphic designer Sean Campbell, the flag has not gained much traction in the lesbian community. Gay men pride flag The (cis, white) gay man has always been at the centre of pride movements, but as people opened their minds to include all LGBTQ+ identities in the movement, the rainbow flag increasingly solidified its position as one that represents the entire LGBTQ+ community.
Gilbert's work as a flag maker spanned almost four decades and included distinctions for creating two flags that created the world's records for their length.īorn on June 2, 1951, in Chanute Kansas, Baker worked in the United States Army from 1970 to 1972. Oddly enough, this sapphic symbol was created by a man. Over the next forty years, his creation would be embraced worldwide as the universal symbol of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) movement. World-famous political activist, designer and flag-maker Gilbert Baker was best known for creating the historic Rainbow Flag in 1978.