That led LGBTQ people to begin organizing as a larger community in the 1950s and 1960s prior to Stonewall. The first symbol that has widespread adoption around LGBTQ people was the pink triangle. Prior to World War II, there wasn’t a universal sign or object for gay, trans, and/or queer people to use to build a community around in America, let alone around the world. Just as people complain that the list of letters and numbers to describe LGBTQ people keeps growing, making an “alphabet soup” of the community, people complain every time a Pride flag update or design is announced, but the man credited as the original creator of the flag himself, Gilbert Baker, would revise the Pride flag to better represent diversity. In addition to constant updates to the rainbow, six-colored flag, that is typically understood as the all-inclusive LGBTQ Pride flag, most subsets of the LGBTQ community have their own flags now, varying from the transgender flag designed by Monica Helms decades ago to the “Labrys Lesbian Pride Flag.”įor example, there are genderqueer and genderfluid flags, and bisexual, pansexual, and polysexual flags despite some folks’ inability to tell the difference between the words, let alone the flags.
