For many people, the standard rainbow flag is the first image that comes to mind during Pride Month. It flies from city halls, storefronts, and front porches every June, unless it’s been canceled and outlawed by the Christian nationalist regime currently in power, oddly threatened by Skittles colors and concerned about what goes on in the bedrooms of other people. But the rainbow’s only one part of a much larger story. Over the decades, Pride flags have evolved into a colorful visual language representing the many identities that make up the LGBTQIA+ community.
The story begins in 1978, when artist and activist Gilbert Baker created the first rainbow Pride flag for San Francisco’s Gay Freedom Day Parade. Encouraged by gay rights pioneer Harvey Milk, Baker wanted a symbol that celebrated queer people rather than reminding them of persecution. Before the rainbow flag, activists often used the pink triangle, a symbol that had been used by the Nazis to identify gay men. Baker believed the community deserved something more hopeful. The original flag featured eight colors, each with its own meaning, including hot pink for sexuality and turquoise for magic and art.
As LGBTQ+ visibility expanded, new flags started appearing to give visibility to identities that often felt overlooked and represent the diversity of the community. The bisexual flag was designed by Michael Page in 1998, and the transgender flag was designed by Monica Helms in 1999. The 2010s brought another wave of evolution. In 2017, Philadelphia introduced the “People of Color” Pride flag that added black and brown stripes to address conversations about race within queer communities. Shortly afterward in 2018, designer Daniel Quasar created the Progress Pride Flag, which incorporated those stripes along with the colors of the transgender flag into a chevron design pointing forward. The message was clear: progress is ongoing, and inclusion requires continued effort. In 2021, activist Valentino Vecchietti introduced a intersex-inclusive version, adding a yellow triangle and purple circle to ensure even more identities are visibly represented.
It can be controversial within the community that there are also many flags for different identities. There are dozens of unique flags representing identities including lesbian, pansexual, asexual, nonbinary, genderfluid, aromantic, and many others. While critics argue the growing number of flags is overwhelming, supporters see them as evidence of a community becoming more visible and nuanced. One commenter pointed out that in the United States, we have one flag, but when states joined, they had individual flags, while counties and cities have their own flags too.
Smaller groups within the community often want to celebrate how they identify by displaying their unique flag: learning the nuances about identifications and their affiliated flags (sapiosexual means sexual attraction based on intellectual attraction, versus demisexual meaning emotional connection, while abrosexual indicates that the way people identify changes over time) is one way to become more educated about the wide array of preferences within the community. When people complain there are “too many flags” or identities, it can be seen as a form of homophobia: why is the issue bothersome to someone when it doesn’t affect them? Either way, the continuing evolution of Pride flags reflects a simple truth: people want to see themselves represented. In the current political administration where LGBTQIA+ rights are increasingly endangered, community members have begun to fly Pride flags when they did not before, as resistance has become more crucial.
The rainbow flag remains a powerful umbrella symbol, but the expanding family of Pride flags tells a richer story. Each design represents a community’s effort to claim visibility, celebrate identity, and remind people they belong. In that sense, the evolution of Pride flags mirrors the evolution of the LGBTQ+ community itself—always growing, changing, and finding new ways to be seen.
—Follow Mary McCarthy on Bluesky and Instagram or check out her previous Pride articles:
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