Pride Flags

In 1978 Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in California, commissioned Gilbert Baker to create a design that could be a symbol of progress for the queer community. Baker worked with around 30 people to create the first flags at the gay community center. And the design was unveiled during the 1978 Gay Freedom Day Parade.

The original design had eight stripes. Each stripe was meant to represent a different aspect of the community. Pink for sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for serenity and nature, turquoise for art, indigo for harmony, and violet for spirit.

After Milk’s assassination the demand for the flags grew as people took up the design in honor of his memory. Baker worked with a local company, Paramount Flag co., to mass produce the design. During this time the pink and turquoise stripes present in the original design were removed. The first pink because the color wasn’t available for mass production. But people were having issues with the odd number of colors making it difficult to split in half to be displayed at pride parades. So then the turquoise and indigo stripes were combined into one blue stripe. This gave the 6 stripe pride flag that is most familiar today.

But this wasn’t the end of variations on the traditional pride flag. As the queer community has grown so has the number of pride flags. There are now many identity specific pride flags, like the lesbian flag, the bi flag, the two-spirit flag, the pan flag, the polyamorous flag, the trans flag, the nonbinary flag, the demisexual flag, the list goes on. Each has their own history and symbolism. Many were created in the 2010s.

There have also been additions to the original pride flag. The Philadelphia Pride Flag was commissioned in 2017 by the Philadelphia City Council. This version of the flag was updated to include a black and brown stripe to acknowledge queer people of color and the struggles they face for inclusion within the queer community. The black stripe is also meant to pay respects to the thousands of lives that were lost during the HIV/AIDS crisis.

The progress pride flag was released in June 2018 by Daniel Quasar. This updated version of the flag includes the black and brown script of the Philadelphia version and incorporates the trans flag. These stripes are included in a chevron on a background of the traditional six stripes. This chevron points right to symbolism the progress that the queer community has made towards inclusion. Since its creation this flag has been quickly adopted by much of the queer community.

In 2021 Valentino Vecchietti of Intersex Equality Rights UK released an updated version of the progress flag which also includes the intersex flag. This flag has also quickly circulated throughout the queer community.