The Rainbow Flag
With the Pink Loerie Mardi Gras & Arts Festival revellers arriving for the festival from April 27 to May 1, residents of greater Knysna will witness the LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and intersex) rainbow flag flying high.
The first rainbow flag was designed by San Francisco artist Gilbert Baker in 1978. Baker created the eight-stripe flag in response to a local activist’s call for the need for a community symbol. He dyed and sewed the material himself for the first flag.
The flag first appeared in the same year at the San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Freedom Day Parade after Baker and 30 volunteers hand-stitched and hand-dyed two huge prototype flags for this parade. The original flags had eight stripes, each colour representing a component of the community.
In an interview with Time Magazine, Baker said making it in the colours of the rainbow was the obvious choice. “We needed something that expressed us. The rainbow really fits that, in terms of: we’re all the colours, and all the genders and all the races,” he said. “It’s a natural flag; the rainbow is in the sky and it’s beautiful. It’s a magical part of nature.”
The two original flags’ colours were hot pink, red, orange, yellow, green, turquoise, indigo and violet descending from the top. Baker conceived meanings for each colour from top to bottom – hot pink for sexuality, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sun, green for serenity with nature, turquoise for art, indigo for harmony, and violet for spirit.
Parade-goers continued to fly the flag in the San Francisco gay pride parade each year, and it soon became the symbol for the event. As supporters hung and draped the flags across the city and created a demand, the design lost the hot pink and turquoise colours for practical production reasons and the flag today only has the remaining six colours.
The rainbow flag has since been introduced in the rest of the world. Here in Knysna and Sedgefield the flag can be seen throughout the year outside several establishments who welcome members of the LGBTI community. The Sedgefield Village Antiques & Art Gallery has flown their flag for the past 30 years.
A large version of the flag was passed overhead during the annual Pienk Loerie Mardi Gras street parade while many draped the flag across their floats, coloured their posters in the colours and displayed the flags in the businesses.
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