He became friends with Harvey Milk, the first openly gay person elected to office in California, who urged his friend to create a symbol for gay rights. He occasionally performed as a drag queen and took part the queer liberation movement. I was in love with somebody, and I wanted to scream it from the rooftops.'īaker worked as an Army medic in San Francisco in the early 1970s, and when his time in the Army was over, he decided to stay in the city. It wasn't a terrible, horrible, damn thing. 'I was the only gay person they probably knew, and they struggled with that … I came out because I fell in love. 'When I was young, they thought I was from outer space,' Baker told CNN in 2015.
Born in Kansas in 1951, Baker came out as gay to his parents one Christmas Day after he fell in love. The flag was created by Gilbert Baker in 1978. And during the Hippie movement of the 1960s, peaceful protesters brought the rainbow equals peace concept back to the forefront.īut how the rainbow became specifically associated with LGBTQ rights goes back to San Francisco in the late 1970s, and to one artist in particular. Italy and Greece both use rainbow-striped flags to symbolize peace.
The International Co-operative Movement designed a colorful banner to show international unity in 1921. There's evidence to suggest that rainbow-colored flags date back at least to the German Peasants' War in the 1500s. Flags with a spectrum of colors have been used for centuries to represent change.
