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Gay = Rainbow?

Maybe it has something to do with Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, and "over the rainbow" and being "a friend of Dorothy's...?"
 
Judy Garland was a gay icon. She stared in the "Wizard of Oz" in which she played Dorothy. Gilbert Baker designed the rainbow flag in the 70's to represent the diversity of the gay community, the original had 8 stripes. You can go to any flag maker in the world and ask for a gay pride flag, and they will give the rainbow flag. You didn't ask about the pink triangle. That was given to us by the nazis in the 1930's.
 
It's to annoy us gays and make it easier for straights to mock us.
 
If your afraid of being mocked, you can always go back to safety of your closet...

These symbols are not scared, times change and so do we. But we do have a history, we didn't suddenly just happen.
 
years ago they used to identify themselves with red carnations in the lapel or simply asked " are you a friend of dorothys" in reference to the movie. now with the freedom of who we are codes are not as necessary.
 
The History of the Rainbow, Freedom Flag can be found here on Wikipedia.

Rainbow Flag

rainbow-flag.jpg
 
On one ever mentions it, but I've wondered if the flag to some extent, wasn't inspired by the hanky code. :twisted:
 
No, there really was a hanky code. I didn't use it but I knew lots of people that did. Green for hustlers. Blue for uniforms. Red for fisting. Black for S&M. Yellow for piss play. Brown for scat. Right and left denoted active or passive.


Oh boy! It took 5 seconds to find a website that has the whole list...


http://www.gaycityusa.com/hankycodes.htm
 
The rainbow is a spectrum of colors that when mixed together equal one. A spectrum of ideas come together to embrace one idea...being Gay.

I just pulled that off the top of my head.
 
Tongue_Me said:
Who uses flags these days anyway? Aren't they so 1970's?
Click to expand...


No. I see rainbow flags in lots of places... Of course I live in SF so maybe it doesn't count. However a couple of years ago I was in Virginia visiting the family. We were driving down Military Rd between Arlington and Falls Church, And on that Rd there is a large brick house with white columns, and a very tall flag pole in front. I used to ride past that house every day on the school bus, and that pole always had very large American flag flying from it. On this trip I looked up and what do you think I saw? A very large Rainbow flag was flying from that pole. I damn near fell out of the car. :gogirl:
 
Each of the colors represent a principle or virtue:

Red = Life
Orange = Health
Yellow = Sun
Green = Nature
Blue = Serenity
Purple = Spiritality

There was also pink and turqousie
Pink = Sexuality
Turqousie = Magic
 
Sometimes it blows my mind how many of us don't even know about our own civil rights movement and our history.

The only thing crazier is that the information is so readily available and yet...
 
There's a lot more to the rainbow than some trumped-up symbolism that political activists in the 70s decided to use as our flag.

There is the biblical symbol of a rainbow, which means "this shall not happen again."

There is the resonance with the song "Over the Rainbow" from The Wizard of Oz, which is a song about wanting to get out of the drab black-and-white/sepia (heteronormist) world in which you're trapped to go to a newer, freer place, a place of dazzling colors and great adventures, "where troubles melt like lemondrops away above the chimneytops..."

Gays coopted Dorothy and The Wizard of Oz rather freely very early on, as a symbol of where you can go if you just get away from where you're from. But being a Friend of Dorothy might predate the film, another theory is that it's for Dorothy Parker who was well-beloved of homosexuals for her scathing wit.

There's more, and the Wikipedia article is a good one, so go read it.

But I wish to heaven people would quit complaining about it. I mean, yeah it's kind of loud and kind of 70s-ish, but its ours. Take pride in the outward symbols of what you are, even if you think it's only a small fraction of what you are. You don't complain about your national flag or your state flag or flags on top of churches, do you? Stop hiding in fear and wave your flag proudly, whichever flag happens to apply to you.
 
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