From top to bottom, the colors represent sex, life, healing, sunlight, nature, magic and art, serenity, and spirit. The eight-color flag first flew over the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade in June of 1978. Gilbert Baker, a friend of San Fancisco’s openly gay City Supervisor Harvey Milk, designs the first rainbow flag. Here’s a timeline of some of the major LGBTQ+ flags and what they stand for. The history of the Pride Flag goes back to the 1970s, and the design has changed numerous times over the years. On Twitter, some users expressed frustration with the addition of the black and brown stripes, saying that the flag already includes the message of diversity and that the addition needlessly politicizes the flag.Colorful flags are flown at many LGBTQ+ events. Some People In The Community Have Been Pushing Back Against The Addition The campaign and new flag are one way the city and the Office of LGBT Affairs are addressing those issues. Philadelphia's downtown gay neighborhood, called the Gayborhood, has faced multiple instances of racial discrimination within the past year, including discriminatory dress-code policies at local bars and a leaked video of a nightclub owner using a racial slur. Philadelphia's LGBT Community Has Had To Confront Blatant Racial Discrimination In The Past Few YearsĪccording to CNN, the city's LGBT community has struggled with several incidents of racial discrimination in the past few years. Watching the life stream on our Facebook page at… /WNucG3bN3Z Getting ready to raise the new Philly Gay Pride flag. In collaboration with Philadelphia design firm Tierney, the Philadelphia Office of LGBT Affairs came up with the idea of adding a black and a brown stripe to the flag to represent people of color, who have been "marginalized, ignored, and even intentionally excluded" from the the LGBT community, according to the More Color More Pride campaign website. For This Year's Pride Month, Philadelphia Commissioned A Redesign Then the committee organizing the 1979 Gay Freedom Day Parade cut turquoise to give the flag an even number of colors, so it could be flown as two halves in San Francisco. First, pink was cut because the dye for it was apparently difficult to obtain at the time for mass production. Over time, the flag was cut down to six colors. The flag was eventually cut down to six colors out of practical considerations. At the top was hot pink, which represented sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow signifying sunlight, green for nature, turquoise to represent art, indigo for harmony, and finally violet at the bottom for spirit. The original flag featured eight colors, each having a different meaning. The different colors within the flag were meant to represent togetherness, since LGBT people come in all races, ages and genders, and rainbows are both natural and beautiful. The original pride flag, designed by Gilbert Baker, had eight colors - all meant to represent something different.
But for some, the new stripes felt like an unnecessary alteration to an essential LGBT symbol. The additions, meant to represent LGBT people of color, brought feelings of excitement for many activists and advocates. Above the traditional top red stripe were new brown and black ones. Last week, a new version of the rainbow gay pride flag flew over Philadelphia to kick off gay pride month.