When and how the LGBT rainbow flag was born

by Ivano Abbadessa - 2016.07.01

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York now has the original rainbow flag on display in the section on objects that symbolise the most significant historical events of the 20th century. The story of the LGBT community banner – given that this week is dedicated to gay pride – deserves not just to be remembered but to be retold.



It was during Gay Pride in San Francisco in 1978 when American activist Gilbert Baker responded to the call to “use something to represent us that has not been imposed upon us”. He suggested adopting the new flag as an alternative to the pink triangle (used by the Nazis to distinguish homosexuals imprisoned in camps and used until then by gays and lesbians during protest marches). The flag was inspired by the colours of the 'flag of races' (red, black, brown, yellow and white). The first version of the rainbow flag was divided into eight strips. Pink = sexuality; red = life; orange = health; yellow = sunlight; green = nature; turquoise = magic; indigo/blue = serenity; purple = spirit.



When, in late 1978, his friend Harvey Milk, a supervisor to the board of San Francisco who made history as America's first openly gay politician, was killed, there were thousands more requests for the rainbow flag devised by Baker. To meet the unexpected and huge increase in demand and given the difficulty of sourcing the material with all those colours, he decided to eliminate the pink strip. And still unsatisfied a few months later, he decided to merge the indigo and turquoise strips into a single blue one, taking the flag from the initial eight colours to today's six.