Every day brings a new story. And each day contributes to story telling -- in prose and in poetry, in art and in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books.
Today is the story of June 2nd
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It is the 153rd day of the year, leaving 212 days remaining in 2022.
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| From gilbertbaker.com |
In 1978, he designed the flag he is most known for -- the rainbow flag, now a recognized symbol for the LGTB+ community and signifying the identity of the gay-rights movement.
Baker started working on a new symbol for the gay community, partly, he said on his website, to help get over breaking up with his then boyfriend. At the time, a pink triangle was used to identify a gay person, but it had arisen during a dark era of gay oppression -- the Nazis used it to shame gay men and women.
Baker thought a flag -- generally created from a time of rebellion or revolution -- would be more appropriate as gay people began to struggle openly for equal rights. "I thought a gay nation should have a flag too, to proclaim its own idea of power," he said.
At a subsequent gay event, he was struck by the diversity of the community. The rainbow flag idea was born.
He originally designed an eight-color flag, of pink, red, orange, yellow, green, turquoise, indigo, and violet. Later -- because pink fabric was hard to obtain in bulk -- pink was dropped. Hanging the flag vertically meant covering the color in the middle because of a hanging bar -- so the basic flag became a six-color rainbow of red, orange, yellow, green, indigo, and violet.
Today, the colors vary, and are used to represent various members of the community, lesbian, gay, trans, and bisexual. Sometime, black and brown are added to represent people of color. Other sexualities and gender identities -- asexual, gender fluid, pansexual, and non-binary, among them -- are often represented by other colors.
Baker died in 2017 in New York.
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