A rainbow flag is a multi-colored flag consisting mostly of stripes in the colors of the rainbow. There are several, unrelated rainbow flags in use today. The best known is probably the gay pride one. The peace flag is especially popular in Italy. There are also other, less well known rainbow flags.
The rainbow flag, sometimes called the freedom flag, has been used as a symbol of gay and lesbian pride since the 1980s. The colors symbolize gay pride and gay rights. It originated in the United States, but is now used around the world.
The rainbow flag was first used to symbolize gay pride and diversity by San Francisco artist Gilbert Baker; it currently consists of six colored stripes of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. It is most commonly flown with the red stripe on top, as the colors appear in a natural rainbow.
The original gay pride flag was hand-dyed by Baker, and consisted of eight stripes of hot-pink, red, orange, yellow, green, turquoise, indigo, and violet. Baker assigned specific meaning to each of the colors as follows:
hot pink, for sex
red, for life
orange, for healing
yellow, for sun
green, for nature
turquoise, for art
indigo, for harmony
violet, for spirit
After the 1978 assassination of openly gay City Supervisor Harvey Milk, demand for the rainbow flag greatly increased. To meet demand, the Paramount Flag Company began selling a version of the flag using stock rainbow fabric consisting of seven stripes of red, orange, yellow, green, turquoise, indigo, and violet. As Baker ramped up production of his version of the flag, he too dropped the hot-pink stripe due to the unavailability of hot-pink fabric.
In 1979, the flag was modified for a final time. When hung vertically from the lamp posts of San Francisco's Market Street, the center stripe was obscured by the post itself. Changing the flag design to one with an even number of stripes was the easiest way to rectify this, so the turquoise stripe was dropped. At the same time, the indigo stripe was replaced with a blue stripe, which resulted in the current six stripe version of the flag.
In 1989, the rainbow flag came to nationwide attention in America after John Stout sued his landlords and won when they attempted to prohibit him from displaying the flag from his West Hollywood, California apartment balcony.
This rainbow flag originated in Italy. It was first used in a peace march in 1961 and was inspired by similar multi-colored flags used in demonstrations against nuclear weapons. It became popular with the Pace da tutti i balconi ("peace from every balcony") campaign in 2002, started as a protest against the impending war in Iraq. The most common variety has seven colors, purple, blue, azure (the Italian national color), green, yellow, orange and red, and is emblazoned in bold with the Italian word PACE, meaning "peace". Common variations include moving the purple stripe down below the azure one, and adding a white stripe on top (the original flag from the 60s had a white stripe on top). This flag has been adopted internationally as a symbol of the peace movement.
