GAY PEOPLE'S

Chronicle

Section B▾ Pride Guide 2002

How he rainbow flag losten pair of stripes

The braver once had eight colors. It caps a gay and lesbian symbols

by Eric Resnick

19

ally during Pride celols and colors are used symbolize pride or to

most popular and univerthe LGBT community. San Francisco Gay and when artist Gilbert Baker from the hippie movement and

Para

CLOUDS.

Marginal bamers, which were hand-dyed

30 volunteers, had eight stripes. Each cuted a component of the community: hot sexuality, red for Life, orange for healing, yellow am tureen for name, turquoise for art, indigo for sony and violet for spirit.

The yellow

sed with the stress of his creations, Baker apled the Paramount Flag Company to manufacture or the 1979 parade. The company couldn't purchase material for the mass-produced flags, so that Pas removed.

he organizing committee only wanted six colors so three could be on each side of the street. The turquoise was removed and the indigo was changed to royal blue. ith the remaining colors of red, orange, thue and purple were a hit, and their design ty quickly spread to other cities and Today, the International Congress of izes it as a symbol of gay pride. ctly displayed with the red on top, as tal rainbow. With the flag hung vertild be on the left.

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different versions of the rainbow flag Identify gay groups with special inter-

er AIDS flag is a rainbow flag with a d to the violet stripe, in memory of

lovich, a Viet Nam veteran dying of when a cure for AIDS is found, the be removed from all the flags and in Washington, D.C.

lag first appeared at the Mr. Leather May 1989. It was designed by artist

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stripe of the six-color raina black one.

lag and Pride flags are a combination of colors and dopted by local clubs and groups. The most

commonly recog

the Internation Brotherhoo

were made to wear a green triangle; political prisoners wore red; homosexuals wore pink. Two yellow triangles overlapping to form a star marked Jewish prisoners; and an inverted yellow triangle under a pink triangle marked the gay Jews.

Even after the Allied troops liberated the concentration camps in 1945, homosexuals remained incarcerated in "legal" prisons because they were still considered to be sex criminals. Paragraph 175 remained in effect in West Germany until its repeal in 1969.

In the 1970s, gay liberation groups reclaimed the pink triangle. It is easily recognized and draws attention to its history of oppression and persecution.

The black triangle, which has been claimed as a symbol by lesbians and non-lesbian feminists,

also has its history in Nazi Germany. Though Paragraph 175 did not include sexual relations between women. those who displayed "anti-social" traits, believed to include lesbians, prostitutes, and those refusing to bear children, were imprisoned and forced to wear the black triangle.

Today, the pink and black triangles symbolize solidarity, pride, and a promise to never allow another Holocaust.

In the 1980s, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power inverted the pink triangle, making it point up, signifying an active fight instead of a passive resignation to fate.

Artist Michael ge created a bisexual pride symbol by placing a powder blue triangle behind and to the right of the pink one. It debuted in 1998.

λ

The lambda, the Greek letter L. was selected as a gay symbol meaning "liberation" when it was adopted in 1970 by the New York Gay Activists Alliance. In 1974, the International Gay Rights Congress held in Edinburgh, Scotland also adopted it as the international symbol for gay rights. Greek Spartans regarded the lambda to mean unity. An additional theory is that veteran Spartan warriors, who were often paired off with younger men during battle, displayed the symbol on their shields. It was believed that the warriors would fight more fiercely knowing that their lovers were fighting alongside them. The lambda never achieved the prominence of the rainbow because it was amely viewed as a male-

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