![the gay men pride flag meaning the gay men pride flag meaning](https://static01.nyt.com/images/2017/04/01/us/01xp-Baker-Obit/01xp-Baker-Obit-superJumbo.jpg)
More difficult to determine is how, why and when the flag gained its globally recognised symbolism for LGBTQ+ pride.
![the gay men pride flag meaning the gay men pride flag meaning](https://downtownmagazinenyc.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/2000px-Gay_flag.svg_.png)
Baker’s artistic proclivities did, however, play a central role in turquoise being dropped, obliged to cut the colour by his preference for an even number of stripes on the flags to adorn the streetlamps of Market Street. When he sat down to redesign the flag for the following year’s parade, this time with the mind to “festoon the route with hundreds of flags”, Koskovich says, a lawsuit over funding nearly halted the project. In the wake of Gay Freedom Day, Baker wanted to arrange commercial fabrication, the first hitch being that flag fabric was unavailable in hot pink. The enduring rainbow flag design incorporates only six colours, broadly the result of logistical limitations as opposed to artistic choice. Last week, however, the GLBT Historical Society announced that a segment of one flag, measuring at around 28 by 12 feet, was exhumed, authenticated and delivered to the society by the Gilbert Baker Foundation, to be the centrepiece of a new exhibition celebrating Baker’s life and work. The original flags were thought lost for decades. “One also featured a corner square of tie-dyed white stars on a blue field, a suggestion from Segerblom as a response to the United States flag.” While little attention is generally paid to the semiotic meanings of each colour in the present, Baker himself attributed pink for sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for the sun, turquoise for magic, blue for serenity and violet for spirit. “Each had eight stripes in rainbow colours,” he continues. The flags, sizing in at around thirty feet high by sixty feet wide, were the brainchildren of the Gay Freedom Day Decorations Committee, cochaired by Gilbert Baker and Lynn Segerblom – “self-proclaimed hippies”, Koskovich says. “At the Plaza entrance, marchers were welcomed by an exceptional sight: in place of the United States and United Nations flags usually flown from a towering pair of flagpoles, two enormous rainbow banners billowed overhead.” Their contemporary symbolism had yet to be established, of course, but as Koskovich asserts, “They created a beautifully paradoxical impression, at once festive and awe-inspiring.” “To reach Civic Center, the route turned just once, veering to the right at United Nations Plaza,” says Koskovich. The 1978 parade began on Market Street and ended with a festival in front of San Francisco City Hall. By 1978, the event boasted almost a quarter of a million revellers from across the United States and, indeed, the globe. The first had occurred eight years prior, attracting just a handful of marchers. On 25 June 1978, San Franciscans across the city celebrated Gay Freedom Day, as the annual Pride celebration was then known.
![the gay men pride flag meaning the gay men pride flag meaning](https://queerintheworld.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/pride-flags-meaning-Gay-Leather-Pride-Flag.jpg)
When it comes to the rainbow flag, we know, for sure, how and when things began.