Feature > Rainbow Flags

Continuing our look at moments of lesbian and gay history, we now focus on one of the most widely used and recognised symbols of our community – the rainbow flag.

Picture the scene: you’re sitting in your local having a drink on a Tuesday night. Chances are your local doesn’t happen to be the most brilliant lesbian pub the world has ever seen. Chances are you and your girlfriend are the only lesbians in the place. You’re in the middle of a discussion about whether to spend your money on the bathroom suite that’s on offer in B&Q or just splash out on a weekend away and worry about the bathroom when you get home, and then your eardrums are virtually burst as someone ‘taps’ a microphone to see if it’s switched on. It suddenly dawns on you – it’s Tuesday night in your local – it’s quiz night.

Before you know it you’re casting your mind back to Sandy Shaw and the Eurovision Song Contest – but which year was it? And what was the name of the first Blue Peter dog for god’s sake? You decide to come back to them later, the next question’s coming and you don’t want to miss it.

“How many colours are there in the gay rainbow flag,” booms the voice of the quizmaster. Finally, a question just made for you – an easy point if ever there was one. And then as you look at each other your almost-smirk turns into a confused frown. Is a gay rainbow flag different to any other rainbow flag then? Now you’re not so sure. But if they’re asking a question about it, it must be. How would you know though? You haven’t discovered the “Things you should know if you’re a lesbian” manual yet – in fact, you’re not entirely sure if it’s been written at all.

You can both vaguely remember your respective mothers ‘singing a rainbow’ to you when you were young. You admit it – you can remember the words. “Red and yellow and pink and green ... orange and purple and blue. I can sing a rainbow, sing a rainbow, sing a rainbow too.” You couldn’t help but sing the rainbow bit, it’s kind of catchy. Now let’s see, there are 8 colours in that one – would that be the non-gay one then? But there’s pink in it – surely that would be the gay one? Is 8 right? Doesn’t the colour spectrum thing have an odd number of colours? You desperately cast your mind back to early physics classes, but there were so many things going on with your hormones then and you’re sure that’s when you discovered you liked girls – the colour spectrum naturally faded into insignificance if truth be told. But you have a dim recollection of a prism, and for some reason Richard of York … of course!!! The phrase! The one that helped scrape you an ‘o’ level, way back when: Richard of York gave battle in vain. Let’s see, there are 7 colours in that one. An actual rainbow works on the same principle as a prism doesn’t it, so let’s say the non-gay one is the spectrum with 7. So maybe the gay one is the ‘sing a rainbow’ one? 8? You guess at 8.

Technically speaking you could claim a degree of correctness with 8, since Gilbert Baker, the San Francisco artist credited with developing the flag in 1978 originally chose an 8 colour rainbow for his design. He was looking to find an iconic symbol that could be used year after year at the San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Pride Parades. The colours in his flag all represented an aspect of gay and lesbian life: Pink for sexuality, Red for life, Orange for healing, Yellow for the sun, Green for nature, Blue for art, Indigo for harmony and Violet for spirit.

Baker launched his flag at the 1978 Pride Parade in San Francisco – he and a team of volunteers hand dyed and sewed a large prototype that went down a storm at the event. Trying to get the flag mass-produced for the following year’s parade proved more difficult however, since Pink was not a colour that was commercially available at the time. He had to lose a stripe – the flag was down to 7 colours. Then even before the 1979 Parade happened, the flag lost yet another stripe. The Pride Parade Committee wanted an even number of colours for use along both sides of the route of that year’s parade in order that the gay and lesbian community could unite under it in protest against the recent assassination of an openly gay city supervisor, Harvey Milk. 1979 saw the San Francisco Parade route lined with Red, Orange and Yellow on one side of the street; green, blue and purple on the other. Today’s 6 colour flag was born.

So there you have it – something to include in the “Things you should know if you’re a lesbian” manual, whenever you get around to writing it. Now about Sandy Shaw and the Blue Peter dog …