Why is the rainbow a gay symbol

The rainbow flag or pride flag (formerly gay pride flag) is a symbol of LGBTQ pride and LGBTQ social movements. The flag has been modified in different places at different times. The rainbow flag was created in by artist, designer, Vietnam War veteran and then-drag performer, Gilbert Baker.

Oscar Wilde wore a green carnation, and yellow served the same purpose in Australia, and purple provided that function in some communities in the United States. The colors reflect the diversity of the LGBTQ community and the spectrum of human sexuality and gender.

Why a color combination at all, and not some kind of shape as a logo instead? Baker's rainbow pattern has since moved on from just flags. The story of the rainbow flag is a lot more complicated than most tellings would suggest: It starts with an anti-gay ballot initiative and ends with accusations of a decades-long lie.

The rainbow flag was a way of taking these various colors and turning them into a coherent symbol, reclaimed by the LGBT community. Baker decided to make that symbol a flag because he saw flags as the most powerful symbol of pride. As he later said in an interview, “Our job as gay people was to come out, to be visible, to live in the truth, as I say, to get out of the lie.

He made the flag for the Gay Freedom Pride Parade that year in San Francisco, at the request of Harvey Milk, a gay city politician who was assassinated later that year. During the Holocaust, Nazis forced gay men to wear pink triangles as a symbol of sexual deviance.

People knew immediately that it was our flag. Judy Garland, the star of "The Wizard of Oz," has a large following as a gay symboland is famous for singing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" in the movie. The rainbow was chosen to represent the LGBTQ community by Gilbert Baker, a gay artist who wanted to make a proud statement through a symbol showing diversity.

It came from such a horrible place of murder and holocaust and Hitler. Pink dye was prohibitively expensive, and blue and turquoise were "merged" into royal blue. We needed something beautifulsomething from us. And when the Supreme Court established the legality of gay marriage nationwide in 's Obergefell v.

Why not other color combinations? With six colors, the flag could still be evenly split to line two sides of the street for a march in protest of Milk's assassination in I realized I would have to make some compromises in order for this to really function as a symbol.

The rainbow is so perfect because it really fits our diversity in terms of race, gender, ages, all of those things. The contemporary version has six colors, but the original had eight. He believed that the rainbow was ideal because it is found in nature. The flag has changed over the years.

Each color had its own symbolic meaning. Closeted gay people have also historically used bright colors to signal their homosexuality to each other, as Forrest Wickman wrote in Slate. He was commissioned to create a flag by another gay icon, politician Harvey.

Hodges case, the White House also showed its rainbow stripes.

Rainbow flag history The

It's used to symbolize solidarity with LGBT movements. Bythe flag has since collapsed to six colors — for practical reasons. But why rainbows, of all symbols? The rainbow also has some pop culture significance for the LGBT community.