Rainbow Gilbert Baker designed the rainbow pride flag for the 1978
San Francisco Gay Freedom Day celebration. The flag was designed as a "symbol of hope" and liberation, and an alternative to the symbolism of the
pink triangle. The flag does not depict an actual rainbow. Rather, the colors of the rainbow are displayed as horizontal stripes, with red at the top and violet at the bottom. In the original eight-color version, pink stood for sexuality, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for the sun, green for nature, turquoise for art, indigo for harmony, and violet for spirit. A copy of the original 20-by-30 foot, eight-color flag was made by Baker in 2000 and was installed in the
Castro district in San Francisco. Many variations on the rainbow flag exist, including ones incorporating other LGBTQ symbols like the triangle or lambda. In 2018, designer
Daniel Quasar created a modified version of the rainbow pride flag, incorporating elements of other flags to bring focus on inclusion and progress. This flag is known as the Progress Pride flag. In 2021, Valentino Vecchietti of Intersex Equality Rights UK redesigned the Progress Pride flag to incorporate the
intersex flag.
Aromanticism The
aromantic pride flag consists of five horizontal stripes, which are (from top to bottom) green, light green, white, gray, and black. The flag was created by Cameron Whimsy
Asexuality The
asexual pride flag consists of four horizontal stripes: black, gray, white, and purple from top to bottom. The flag was created by an
Asexual Visibility and Education Network user standup in August 2010, as part of a community effort to create and choose a flag. The black stripe represents asexuality; the gray stripe represents
gray-asexuals and
demisexuals; the white stripe represents
allies; and the purple stripe represents community.
Bisexuality Introduced on December 5, 1998, the
bisexual pride flag was designed by
activist Michael Page to represent and increase the visibility of bisexual people in the LGBTQ community and society as a whole. Page chose a combination of
Pantone Matching System (PMS) colors magenta (pink), lavender (purple), and royal (blue). Page stated that he took the colors and overlap for the flag from the
biangles, overlapping blue and pink triangles that represent bisexuality. The biangles were designed by artist Liz Nania as she co-organized a bisexual contingent for the
Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights in 1987. The design of the biangles began with the
pink triangle, a Nazi concentration camp badge that later became a symbol of
gay liberation representing
homosexuality. The addition of a blue triangle
contrasts the pink and represents
heterosexuality. The two triangles overlap and form lavender, which represents the "queerness of bisexuality", referencing the
Lavender Menace and 1980s and 1990s
associations of lavender with queerness.
Gay men Various pride flags have been used to symbolize gay men. Rainbow flags have been used since 1978 to represent both gay men and, subsequently, the LGBTQ community as a whole. Since the 2010s, various designs have been proposed to specifically represent the gay male community, the one shown above being the most common today.
Intersex The
intersex flag was created by
Morgan Carpenter of
Intersex Human Rights Australia in July 2013 to create a flag "that is not derivative, but is yet firmly grounded in meaning". The organization describes the circle as:
Lesbian No single design for a
lesbian-pride flag has been widely adopted. However, many popular ones exist. The
labrys lesbian flag was created in 1999 by graphic designer Sean Campbell, and published in June 2000 in the Palm Springs edition of the
Gay and Lesbian Times Pride issue. The design involves a labrys, a type of double-headed axe, superimposed on the inverted
black triangle, set against a
violet background. Among its functions, the labrys was associated as a weapon used by the
Amazons of
mythology. In the 1970s it was adopted as a symbol of empowerment by the
lesbian feminist community. Women considered asocial by
Nazi Germany for not conforming to the
Nazi ideal of a woman, which included
homosexual females, were condemned to
concentration camps and wore an inverted
black triangle badge to identify them. Some lesbians reclaimed this symbol as
gay men reclaimed the
pink triangle (many lesbians also reclaimed the pink triangle although lesbians were not included in
Paragraph 175 of the
German criminal code). The
lipstick lesbian flag was introduced by Natalie McCray in 2010 in the
weblog This Lesbian Life. The design contains a red kiss in the left corner, superimposed on seven stripes consisting of six shades of red and pink colors and a white bar in the center. The lipstick lesbian flag represents "homosexual women who have a more feminine gender expression", but has not been widely adopted. The "pink" lesbian flag was derived from the lipstick lesbian flag but with the kiss mark removed. The "orange-pink" lesbian flag, modeled after the seven-band pink flag, was introduced on
Tumblr by
blogger Emily Gwen in 2018. The colors include dark orange for "gender non-conformity", orange for "independence", light orange for "community", white for "unique relationships to womanhood", pink for "serenity and peace", dusty pink for "love and sex", and dark rose for "femininity". Social networking websites.-->
Non-binary The
non-binary pride flag was created in 2014 by Kye Rowan. Each stripe color represents different types of non-binary identities: yellow for people who identify outside of the
gender binary, white for non-binary people with multiple genders, purple for those with a mixture of both male and female genders, and black for
agender individuals.
Pansexuality The
pansexual pride flag was introduced in October 2010 in a Tumblr blog. It has three horizontal bars that are pink, yellow and blue. "The pink represents being attracted to women, the blue being attracted to men, and the yellow for being attracted to everyone else";
Transgender The
transgender pride flag was designed by transgender woman
Monica Helms in 1999. It was first publicly displayed at a pride parade in Phoenix, Arizona, US, in 2000. It was flown from a large public flagpole in San Francisco's
Castro District beginning November 19, 2012, in commemoration of the
Transgender Day of Remembrance.
Philadelphia became the first county government in the United States to raise the transgender pride flag in 2015. It was raised at
City Hall in honor of Philadelphia's 14th Annual
Trans Health Conference, and remained next to the US and City of Philadelphia flags for the entirety of the conference. Then-
Mayor Michael Nutter gave a speech in honor of the trans community's acceptance in Philadelphia. == Gallery ==