The colorful symbol of resistance, joy, and diversity known as the rainbow flag (or Pride flag) was born out of one man’s burst of inspiration. In 1978, San Francisco Board of Supervisors member Harvey Milk, just months before his assassination, asked local artist Gilbert Baker to design a powerful emblem to represent the burgeoning gay rights movement.
On June 25 of that year, Baker, cochair of the decorations committee for the city’s Gay Freedom Day celebration, revealed his creations: two 30-by-60-foot rainbow flags, flying at San Francisco’s United Nations Plaza. Baker, whose choice was partly inspired by the fact that a rainbow, like same-sex attraction, is a natural phenomenon, later recalled, “It completely astounded me that people just got it, in an instant, like a bolt of lightning—that this was their flag.”
This article appears in Issue 30 of Alta Journal.
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The flag’s full spectrum of colors, embodying the ideal of inclusiveness, has been debated over the years, with stripes added to some versions to be more representative of the broader queer experience. As an icon, the rainbow shows up everywhere, from the windows of queer-friendly businesses to the design collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, from multicolored city crosswalks to the façade of the White House, which the Obama administration lit up to commemorate the legalization of same-sex marriage in 2015. Singapore didn’t decriminalize male same-sex activity until 2022; when my family and I traveled there last summer, a rainbow-striped banner greeted us at the airport. (The city-state had just celebrated its Pride festival, Pink Dot.)
Sadly, the symbol can also provoke hate: In 2023, Laura Ann Carleton, who proudly hung the flag at her store in Cedar Glen, California, was murdered by a man who had frequently posted anti-LGBTQ content online.
In the late 1970s, I was in junior high in a Kansas City suburb, filled with confusion and shame about my attraction to boys, with nary an idea that one day I might be a proud gay man—and a dad, to boot. This past fall, when my partner and I were celebrating our annual “familyversary” with our daughter—to mark the day a Los Angeles social worker had brought her to our house nine years before—I stopped by a Ralphs grocery store for some last-minute shopping. Thankfully, in the bakery, I spotted a slice of rainbow cake, the perfect symbol for our modern family.
Looking back, I see the genius in Baker’s vision, that after years and years of persecution, a movement for equality could make room for joy and love in a panoply of expressions. And while rainbows are ephemeral, the fact that Baker’s flag has attained ubiquity is a sign that LGBTQ lights won’t be dimmed.•
Degen Pener is a West Hollywood-based writer and editor with a focus on the environment, culture, and design. He’s currently the executive editor of Four Seasons magazine and is a former deputy editor of the Hollywood Reporter. He has previously written for the New York Times, Out, Los Angeles Magazine, Santa Barbara Magazine, Wallpaper, Veranda, and New York Magazine.
