Rep Your Colors: A Brief History Of The LGBTQ+ Flag

Pride Month is here and many are celebrating by hanging up the LGBTQ+ flag.

The LGBTQ+ flag has a rich history and has evolved with the ongoing fight for equity and equality.

In 2018, Daniel Quasar, a non-binary artist based in Portland, Oregon, combined the elements of all of the flags over the years to embody a full and equitable representation of the queer community. Featuring elements of the trans rights flag, the Philadelphia Pride flag and the “Baker flag,” Quasar’s design is the first fully intersectional flag.

“The colors in the chevron represent trans individuals, people of color, those living with HIV/AIDS, and deceased members of the LGBTQ+ community,” he said.

Let’s take a look at a brief history of the LGBTQ+ flag and how it has evolved over the years.

The origin of the LGBTQ+ flag

The LGBTQ+ flag, sometimes known as the “rainbow flag” and has now become a universally accepted symbol for queer pride, was first designed and released in 1978 by Gilbert Baker, an artist and an openly gay man.

Baker, who died in 2017, was also a drag performer and a close friend of the late San Francisco Mayor Harvey Milk. It was Milk, in fact, who encouraged Baker to come up with the design for the flag.

Milk's assassination

In 1979, Milk was assassinated. In protest, Baker, who never trademarked the design for the flag intending for it to be used as a symbol that was free for the community to use, attempted to have the LGBTQ+ flag mass-produced so that it could be flown at Milk’s funeral.

At the time, Baker’s design featured a pink stripe but because the pink fabric was hard to source the color was eventually dropped, thus paving the way for the now-universally accepted flag design.

However, Teen Vogue suggests that the pink fabric was dropped because it was a direct reference to sex — something that made people uncomfortable in the 1970s, especially as it pertained to non-hetero sex.

The bisexual pride flag

On December 5, 1998, Michael Page — a Florida resident — debuted the tri-color bisexual flag, which featured pink (representative of being homosexual), blue (representative of being heterosexual) and purple (a blend of the two colors).

The trans flag

In 1999, Monica Helms designed the tri-color trans flag, which featured the colors pink, blue and white. Helms, a trans woman and veteran of the armed forces, debuted the flag at the 2000 Pride Parade in Phoenix, Arizona.

LGBTQ+ Black and brown people are recognized in the Philadelphia pride flag

The only LGBTQ+ flag that recognizes the unique struggle faced by those in the Black queer community is the Philadelphia Pride Flag which was commissioned by the city of Philadelphia in 2017. The commission came in response to rising tensions in Philadelphia’s “Gayborhood” where gay people, specifically Black and Brown gay people, began demanding equity, visibility and representation in both the media and in the ongoing fight for equal rights.