In 1978, artist and drag queen Gilbert Baker designed the first iteration of the rainbow flag. The story goes that he was urged by Harvey Milk, one of the first openly gay elected officials in the United States, to create a symbol of pride for the gay community. Over time, the various colours came to reflect both the immense diversity and the unity of the LGBTQ+ community. But Baker wasn’t thinking about diversity when he presented the idea.
In fact, no one knows exactly why Baker chose to make the symbol a rainbow. There is record of him picking colours to represent specific in the movie . Regardless of what the truth is, this process of selection perfectly captures how gay culture was formed and continues to grow – through purposeful meaning-making, and the active curation of memes.
