Rainbow Flag

Please. Don’t worry. This is the still the singsoc blog. Not a LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender) pop-up. And yes I know there will be a uproar, “WTH Zhiwei post gay stuff, he damn gay lah”, “Wow! Die die must subscribe one year of GAY TIMES for him!”.

Firstly, I would wish everyone look at this in a healthy point of view. Oh, by the way, for those that is confused, the rainbow flag is the colours of Gay pride. Today, we going to discuss on the colours not who’s gay and who’s not

Have you even take a closer look and wonder.. Aren’t there supposed to have 7 colours in the rainbow? Why is it only 6? Is it a printing error? What is the flag represent?

Of course there are special meaning for the colours..

Red represents Life
Orange represents Healing
Yellow represents Sun
Green represents Nature
Royal Blue represents Harmony
Violet represents Spirit

In 1978, Gilbert Baker of San Francisco, inspire by the five-striped "Flag of the Race", designed a rainbow flag as a symbol of gay and lesbian community pride. Slowly the flag took hold, offering a colourful and optimistic alternative to the more common pink triangle symbol.

Initially, Baker’s design is a flag with eight stripes: pink, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet, which represents, sexuality, life, healing, sun, nature, art, harmony, and spirit respectively. He dyed and sewed the material for the first flag himself. He later found out that hot pink was not commercially available, therefore, mass production of his eight-striped version became impossible. The flag was thus reduced to seven stripes.

In 1979, the city's first openly gay supervisor, Harvey Milk, was assassinated. Wishing to demonstrate the gay community's strength and solidarity in the aftermath of this tragedy, the 1979 Pride Parade Committee decided to use Baker's flag. The committee eliminated the indigo stripe so they could divide the colours evenly along the parade route - three colors on one side of the street and three on the other. Soon the six colours were incorporated into a six-striped version that became popularized and that, today, is recognized by the International Congress of Flag Makers.

So next time, if you see a 6 colour rainbow flag in front of a pub, it will mean more than just a gay pub to you. You probably now knows more about their colours than the LGBT.

Zhiwei