What Does The Rainbow Pride Flag Represent?

With June being Pride Month, millions of LGBTQ people and their allies are waving rainbow flags in celebration of their gender and sexual identity.

This, alongside taking part in parties, marches and celebrations throughout June and in some cases throughout the summer, both celebrates the progress that has been made, protests the works that still must done to give everyone the same protections and protects against the erosion of this progress.

The pride flag at the centre of it all has multiple variations, from the six-coloured rainbow flag to the intersex-inclusive progress flag, which emphasises that pride is for every LGBTQ person.

However, whilst the original rainbow flag is a symbol of diversity, its origins come at a turning point for queer rights, when the fight for a day when LGBTQ people would no longer have to remain in the closet looked winnable.   

The Original Eight Stripes

Whilst rainbows have been used as a design motif since Ancient Egypt, and as a symbol of unity since the 1913 James Van Kirk version of the World Peace Flag, the use of the rainbow design as we know it today begins with Gilbert Baker.

A former soldier and prominent gay rights activist, Mr Baker was taught to sew by other activists at the start of the gay rights movement and would produce several notable flags and banners for pro-gay rights and anti-war matches in San Francisco throughout the 1970s.

Following a meeting with Harvey Milk, himself an extremely influential figure in the early gay rights movement, Mr Baker was challenged to create a symbol of pride, open joy and a celebration of gay consciousness.

Inspired by the Brotherhood Flag, the famous Judy Garland (an early gay icon) song Over The Rainbow, The Rolling Stones’ She’s A Rainbow and the 1960s hippie movement, Mr Baker developed a rainbow design with eight symbolic stripes in 1978 :

• Hot Pink - Sexuality

• Red - Life

• Orange - Healing

• Yellow - Sunlight

• Green - Nature

• Turquoise - Magic/Art

• Indigo - Serenity

• Violet - Spirit

Why Did The Pride Flag Change?

The pride flag has shifted and altered in the colours it uses and its overall design, but the first change came within months of the first two eight-stripe rainbow flags being made, largely out of necessity as a symbol of gay pride became very quickly and very widely needed.

The assassination of Harvey Milk, the first-ever openly gay man elected to public office, led to widespread political protests due to the lightest possible sentence being given to his killer, Dan White, an incident which sparked the White Night riots.

The rainbow flag became not only a symbol of pride but also a symbol of protest and remembrance of Mr Milk, but because it was difficult to find hot pink fabric, the stripe was dropped in favour of a more conventional seven-colour rainbow.

The following year, turquoise and indigo were merged into a single royal blue stripe in order to create an even six-stripes flag to line the route of the 1979 San Francisco Fay Freedom Day Parade.

There have been several variations of the flag since, which has placed greater emphasis not only on celebration but on progress.