And this year brought another version from Intersex Equality Rights UK, featuring a yellow triangle and purple circle to represent the intersex community, or people born with a reproductive anatomy that doesn’t fit typical male or female definitions.įlags are political symbols, borrowed from the vocabulary of nationalism, with similar overtones of citizenship, belonging, borders. One year later, the Oregon-based graphic designer Daniel Quasar added the trans flag’s stripes as a horizontal chevron to make the Progress Pride Flag. In 2017, Philadelphia’s Office of LGBT Affairs introduced black and brown stripes to the Pride flag to recognize queer and trans people of color. When I was young and newly out of the closet, around 2013, I saw LGBTQ flags for every community imaginable online, including esoteric variants, such as the green, black, white, and grey aromantic flag, and a pale pink and yellow flag for slim, hairless 20-something twinks. The now-familiar six-stripe flag is actually a redesign. Later that year, though, the flag lost its pink stripe because of fabric unavailability at the local manufacturer, and turquoise fell off the year after for the same reason. That earliest iteration included pink and turquoise stripes, symbolizing sex and art, respectively-parts of queer life that the designers thought were worth fighting for. 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.Since its first flight at 1978’s Gay Freedom Day Parade in San Francisco, the rainbow flag has evolved multiple times.
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.