In 1977, Gilbert Baker had been challenged to design a flag for the movement by Harvey Milk, member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and the first openly gay person elected to public office in the United States. Baker may have been inspired by other multicolor and rainbow flags used by the peace and Hippie movements of the 1960s and 1970s. In the beginning the flag was also known as The Freedom Flag and The Gay Pride Flag.
The colors of the rainbow represent the diversity of the gay community and the fight for a tolerant society with many expressions of love, sexual orientations and gender identities. A year or so later the eight stripes were reduced to six due to the fact that it was difficult for manufacturers to get hold of pink and turquoise. It had eight horizontal stripes: pink, red, orange, yellow, green, turquoise, blue and violet. The Rainbow Flag was designed in 1978 in San Francisco, California by the activist and artist Gilbert Baker. What started as a symbol of pride and protest for a fringe group in society is now part of the U.S. The flag of the LGBT movement is an American invention that became a worldwide phenomenon.
