Eps 1: Never Lose Your Rainbow Flag Again
| Host image: | StyleGAN neural net |
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| Content creation: | GPT-3.5, |
Host
Sean Brown
Podcast Content
LGBT people and allies use the rainbow flag and many rainbow-style objects and color schemes as outer symbols of their identity and support. The color of rainbow flags has become such a recognized symbol of LGBT pride and identity that it has replaced most other LGBT symbols, including the Greek lambda and the pink triangle. Earlier this month, the GLBT Historical Society Museum revealed a glass display case with a valuable piece of queer history - the original rainbow gay pride flag.
The rainbow flag, a symbol of LGBTQ pride and civil rights, was conceived and designed in 1978 by a group of activists in San Francisco. In 2017, the city of Philadelphia added Black and Brown stripes to the top of the Bakers Pride flag to make a statement about the inclusion of LGBTQ people of color. This Pride Month Philadelphia added two colors - black and brown - to its rainbow flag, symbol of LGBTQ pride, and hung it at City Hall.
It is a prismatic object that inspired the late Gilbert Baker to create his iconic rainbow flag in 1978. In 2018, designer Daniel Quasar has moved the black and brown stripes and chevrons onto the side of the Bakers Pride flag and added Monica Helms trans colors to the Progress Pride flag. The artist proposed the rainbow as a modern alternative to the pink triangle used by the Nazis to denote persecuted homosexuals and which the queer community could reclaim as a symbol of pride.
While Beal believes that Phil's adaptation of the flag should be seen as an independent symbol from Baker's, he concedes that he supports the intentions behind it. The late Gilbert Baker detailed in his recent memoir how he came to design his iconic rainbow flag while dancing to LSD on a disco ball. "I believe that in the LGBT community, we should leave the glamour of our rainbow nations such as the South African Gay Pride flag, which is a mixture of rainbow flag and national flag of South Africa, as a symbol to be set aside.
Gilbert Baker is best known for creating the rainbow flag for homosexuals in San Francisco 40 years ago, but he never registered it as a trademark to replicate it and fly over Castro World. After the Gay Pride celebrations in June 2003, Baker restored the flag in its original eight-stripe version and argued that others should do the same. The museum has old pictures of the first rainbow flag ; after the Pride Parade at UN Plaza, the flag was stored in a leaking building that contained the former San Francisco Gay Community Center. Damaged by mold, Baker cut out the damaged parts and retained the fragmented parts of the flag.
In 2017, Philadelphia's Office of LGBT Affairs introduced a black-and-brown striped flag to recognize queer and trans people. In 1990 and in October, Baker wore his pink Jesus costume, consisting of a loincloth with an American flag and pink body paint, on San Francisco's Gay Pride Parade to protest a fundamentalist Christian convention. When a couple changed their light bulbs to rainbow colors in Racine, Wis., they told the community association that they were removing their pride flag, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported.
At the same time, proposals for a Pride flag prospered and multiplied as companies threatened to transform the rainbow into a safe, homogenized symbol and take its radical force away. It was time for black and brown people to be included in the Pride flag, and a redesign in 2018 that featured black, brown and trans pride stripes went viral with some calling it the new symbol of the LGBTQ community. Not surprising, symbols like Pride flag messages of equality, civil rights and victory in same-sex marriage for many LGBTQ people of color and other communities within the umbrella of LGBTQ have felt empty.
Natalia Shmueli, a 25-year-old tech entrepreneur from Tennessee, argues that attaching an intersex symbol to the Pride flag integrates intersex issues into the larger LGBTQ community and noting that intersex people's experiences are rarely used in a context that benefits complexity.
The piece of the rainbow flag - the only defining symbol of queer solidarity during the LGBTQ civil rights movement - was originally thought to have been destroyed after water damaged a warehouse. The piece with the rainbow stripes is now in a glass display case in the Museum of the Historical Society. The disco stripes on the foil are in the colours of Pride: the rainbow, pink, blue and white and the transgender flag.