You’ve seen it everywhere. It’s on coffee mugs, corporate logos every June, and fluttering over city halls from San Francisco to Sydney. But the history of the gay pride flag isn't just some neat linear progression of a design project. It was born in a basement. It was messy. It involved giant trash cans filled with dye and a group of friends who were tired of being invisible.
Honestly, the most common mistake people make is thinking the flag has always had six colors. It didn’t. When Gilbert Baker first dyed those long strips of fabric in 1978, he used eight colors. He had a specific meaning for every single one. Pink was for sex. Red was for life. Orange was for healing. Yellow for sunlight. Green for nature. Turquoise for art. Indigo for harmony. Violet for spirit. It was a literal rainbow of human experience, designed to replace the pink triangle—a symbol with a dark, heavy history rooted in Nazi concentration camps. Baker wanted something "from nature" to represent a movement that was finally stepping out of the shadows.
The San Francisco Origins
The year was 1978. Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in California, was a friend of Baker’s. He kept pushing Gilbert to create a symbol for the community. You have to remember the context here. This was less than a decade after Stonewall. The community was fragmented. They needed a brand, basically, though they wouldn't have called it that back then.
Baker wasn't some corporate graphic designer. He was an artist and a drag queen who knew his way around a sewing machine. Along with Lynn Segerblom (also known as Faerie Argyle Rainbow) and James McNamara, he hunkered down at the Gay Community Center on Grove Street. They didn't have high-end manufacturing. They had trash cans. They filled these massive vats with natural dye, hand-staining a thousand yards of heavy cotton.
It was a nightmare to clean up.
When those first two flags flew at United Nations Plaza during the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade on June 25, 1978, they were huge. They were vibrant. And they were immediately iconic. People got it. They didn't need a manual to explain what a rainbow meant in the context of "coming out."
Why the Colors Changed
If the original design was so perfect, why did it change?
Money and physics.
After Harvey Milk was assassinated in November 1978, the demand for the flag skyrocketed. Everyone wanted one to show solidarity. But when Baker went to the Paramount Flag Company to mass-produce them, he hit a snag. Hot pink fabric was expensive and hard to come by in bulk. To keep costs down and actually get flags into people's hands, the pink stripe was dropped.
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Then came the "odd number" problem.
In 1979, the committee wanted to hang the flags vertically from lamp posts on Market Street. When you have seven stripes (the original eight minus pink), the center stripe gets obscured by the pole. The solution was simple but radical: they dropped the turquoise stripe and combined the indigo and violet into a royal blue.
That’s how we got the six-color version we see most often today. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet. It was a compromise born of manufacturing limits, yet it became the global standard for decades.
The Evolution Beyond the Six Stripes
The history of the gay pride flag didn't stop in the late seventies. Not by a long shot.
Symbols have to breathe. If they stay static while the community changes, they lose their power. In 1999, Monica Helms created the Transgender Pride Flag—light blue, pink, and white. While not a direct edit of Baker's flag, it signaled a shift toward more specific representation.
Then came 2017. Philadelphia.
The city’s Office of LGBT Affairs released a new version that added a black and a brown stripe at the top. It caused a massive stir. Some people hated it, claiming the original rainbow already included everyone. But the reality on the ground was different. People of color in the queer community were—and are—facing unique layers of discrimination both outside and inside the movement. The "Philadelphia Flag" was a loud, visual acknowledgement that "inclusion" isn't a passive state; it’s something you have to actively design for.
The Progress Pride Flag
A year later, Daniel Quasar took it a step further. Quasar designed the "Progress" version, which tucked the black, brown, and trans-colored stripes into a chevron on the left side. The arrow points to the right, symbolizing forward movement, but it stays on the "hoist" side, acknowledging that we still have a long way to go.
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It’s arguably the most common version you’ll see in 2026.
And in 2021, Valentino Vecchietti of Intersex Equality Rights UK added a yellow triangle with a purple circle to that chevron. Now, the flag represents intersex people too. It’s crowded. It’s complex. It’s a bit of a design "maximalist" situation. But that’s the point. The community isn't a monolith. It’s a messy, beautiful, evolving collection of identities.
The Controversy of Commercialization
You can't talk about the history of the gay pride flag without mentioning how it’s been co-opted. Gilbert Baker never trademarked the flag. He could have been a multi-millionaire. Instead, he saw it as a gift to the world. He intentionally kept it in the public domain so anyone could use it.
There's a dark side to that. "Rainbow washing" is real.
Every June, companies that donate to anti-LGBTQ+ politicians suddenly plaster rainbows on their Twitter avatars. It’s a cynical move. Critics argue that the flag has been stripped of its radical roots—the "trash can dye" roots—and turned into a commodity.
Yet, for a kid in a small town where being out is dangerous, seeing that rainbow on a storefront still means something. It's a weird tension. The flag is simultaneously a radical symbol of defiance and a mass-marketed piece of fabric. Both can be true at the same time.
Lesser-Known Variations
While the Progress flag gets the most press, there are hundreds of specific flags that have emerged from this history.
- The Labrys Flag: Created in 1999, featuring a double-headed ax. It’s deeply rooted in lesbian feminism and Greek mythology.
- The Bisexual Flag: Michael Page designed this in 1998 with pink, royal blue, and a purple overlap. He wanted to increase bisexual visibility, as "bisexual erasure" was a major issue even within the gay community.
- The Pansexual Flag: Bright pink, yellow, and cyan. It showed up around 2010 to distinguish pansexuality (attraction regardless of gender) from bisexuality.
- The Ace Flag: Black, gray, white, and purple for the asexual community.
Each of these exists because the "standard" rainbow sometimes felt too broad. People want to be seen for exactly who they are, not just as a part of a generic whole.
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The Baker Legacy
Gilbert Baker died in 2017. He lived to see his creation become one of the most recognizable icons in the world. He even saw the original 1978 fragments acquired by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York.
Think about that. A hand-dyed rag from a basement in San Francisco ended up in the MoMA.
Baker once said the rainbow was perfect because it fit our diversity in terms of race, age, and gender. It’s a natural phenomenon. You can’t "own" a rainbow.
Even as the flag continues to change—adding stripes, changing shapes, moving from physical fabric to digital pixels—the core intent remains the same. It’s a signal fire. It says, "We are here, and we aren't going anywhere."
Actionable Insights for Using the Pride Flag
If you’re looking to use or display the flag, keep these historical nuances in mind to ensure you’re being respectful rather than performative.
Choose the version that fits the message. If you’re trying to show specific support for marginalized groups within the community, the Progress Pride Flag is the current gold standard for intersectionality. If you’re referencing the historical 1970s movement, the original six or eight-stripe versions are more contextually accurate.
Support the creators. If you’re buying pride gear, look for LGBTQ-owned businesses. Because Baker didn’t trademark the design, anyone can sell it. Buying from the community ensures the "spirit" of the flag—supporting the people it represents—stays intact.
Understand the "why" before the "what." Don't just fly the flag because it's June. Understand that for many, this flag represents a history of police brutality, the AIDS crisis, and a long struggle for legal rights. It’s not just a decoration; it’s a protest tool that happened to become famous.
Acknowledge the evolution. Don't get hung up on "the original was better." The history of the gay pride flag is a history of change. Embracing the newer versions with more stripes isn't "discarding" history; it’s continuing the work that Gilbert Baker started in that San Francisco basement. He created a template, not a finished product. It was always meant to grow.
Keep the history alive by treating the flag as a living document. Whether it's six stripes or eleven, the goal is the same: visibility, safety, and a bit of that "violet spirit" Baker believed in so much.