The month of pride is here and it means that you will be viewing a lot of pride parades and other activities to recognize the impact of the LGBTQ community present all over the world. You really need not be a part of the community to celebrate this festival for the whole month. Yes, you can participate in the events as much as you want. And in this month, you will notice something everywhere – the rainbow flag. The pride flag or the rainbow flag is a crucial part of this month’s celebration.
But there is a deep meaning to that colourful flag. The flag, on the whole, represents the cultural and historical struggle that the people belonging to this community had to face.
Pride month
The month of June is the pride month during which the whole LGBT communities around the world come together to celebrate the freedom of being themselves.
These gatherings are deep-rooted in the dark history of the minority groups who struggled for years to overcome prejudice and fought to be accepted for their original identity.
The initial organizers of this movement picked this month to pay tribute to the uprising in Stonewall which occurred in June 1969. That incident sparked the gay rights movement in modern times. Most of the pride events take place in June while some cities hold their gathering at some other time of the year.
How did it start?
The police raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York’s Greenwich Village at early hours of June 28, 1969, and began throwing out customers. It quickly turned into a riot as the customers started to resist arrest and passer-by’s started to throw bottles on the officers. Fed up after years of harassment by the authorities, the New York’s gay community members broke out into 3-day riots.
This uprising became a catalyst for the formation of gay rights movement organizations. A year after that riot, the country’s first Gay Pride marches were held.
The rainbow flag
The very first rainbow flag was made in 1978 by Gilbert Baker, a civil rights activist, as retaliation against the flag used by the anti-gay community that consisted of pink triangles. These pink triangles were originally used by Nazis to recognize gay people and this lead to misrepresentation of a whole community.
The original flag was handmade, using a combination of 8 vibrant colours. The variety of shades was meant to represent the various types of people in the community. In later times, the flag upgraded to a 6-coloured flag to meet the demands as the official symbol of gay pride.
Here’s the meaning of each colour:
- Red – this colour stands at the topmost in the rainbow flag. It represents life and also imparts courage.
- Orange – this bright shade represents healing.
- Yellow – the colour yellow denotes sunlight or sun. It comes with a deep meaning of being yourself rather than hiding your feelings.
- Green – this shade represents nature.
- Blue – this colour is a replacement for the original colour turquoise and gives the meaning of serenity.
- Purple – this colour forms the lowermost band in the rainbow flag and it denotes spirit.
Like a beautiful rainbow that can be seen after a dark rainy day, the colours of the rainbow flag are finally shining through after a long dark history. In the end, it doesn’t matter who you are or what you are, for love is love and the month of pride is the celebration for it.