Educator, George Benson: I always say to people that queer history is as old as human history because we’ve never not been here. And when you are feeling quite isolated and alone, this flag is a beacon.
My name is George Benson and we are here to talk about the Rainbow Flag.
This flag is from 1978 and it’s the original design that Gilbert Baker made in San Francisco. Harvey Milk, who was the first openly gay elected official in California went to Baker saying, "We need a symbol. We need something visible for us to be seen." And Baker knew that a flag was perfect for that.
The original ones were 30 feet by 60 feet. He gathered about 30 people at the gay community center in San Francisco. And there was 20 people ironing, four hands going through the sewing machine to make these flags. They made it in a way that reflects the diversity of the community—its shared values.
Each color represents an essence of the human spirit. We have hot pink, which means sex; red, which means life; orange means healing; yellow means sunlight; green means nature; turquoise means magic; blue means serenity; and violet means spirit.
In 1979, they had to drop two of the colors. Pink was dropped because it’s not very good for mass production. Flag companies have about 24 colors and hot pink is not one of them. And then they dropped turquoise because it was in the middle and would get obscured. So we are losing sex and magic, which is such a shame. But he knew that this had to be mass-produced. Getting it out there into the world was going to help our community.