Gilbert Baker, nicknamed the gay Betsy Ross, has broken two records for the world’s largest flag, such as this one pictured in the 1994 New York Pride March. Photos: Mick Hicks.
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By Dustin Fitzharris
Friday, June 20, 2008
The year was 1978. Harvey Milk, a gay rights activist and the first openly gay city supervisor of San Francisco, went to Gilbert Baker with a request: Design a new logo for the gay community. Until then, people were using the pink triangle. However, that symbol carried a stigma from the concentration camps of Hitler’s Third Reich, where male homosexuals were forced to wear it.
As a vexillographer (a flag maker), Baker knew a flag was the answer. And on June 25 of that year, the rainbow flag made its debut when Milk carried it through the streets of San Francisco for the Gay Freedom Day Parade. Five months later, he was assassinated.
Marking the flag’s 30th anniversary, Baker will carry a restored version of that original rainbow flag—never before seen in New York—in this Sunday’s Pride March through Manhattan. He’ll be leading the March, as a Grand Marshall, along with transgender television star Candis Cayne; the group PFLAG (Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays); and The LGBT Center, which turns 25 this year.
A lot has happened to the rainbow flag and its creator in three decades. Folks across the globe use it as a symbol of LGBT pride. Baker broke two world’s records for the longest flag, and he continues to find inspiring new uses for the image. In fact, this month, Absolut Vodka, with his assistance, launched Absolut Colors, a special-edition, rainbow sleeve that fits the vodka bottle, and an international advertising campaign that will raise money for InnerPride, the International Association for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and other sexual identities.
In addition to Absolut, in 2006 Baker began a partnership with Knickerbocker Sailing Association, a local sailing organization for the LGBT community. Since then, Baker creates a rainbow sails for the boats, which the Hudson River during Gay Pride.
“Visibility is very important,” Baker said at an Absolut launch party in London. “People who run around saying the gay flag is tired or gay pride is boring are bullshitting themselves. It’s never been more important. We’ve never had more on the line. We’ve come a long way. We’ve fought a good fight and we’ve built an incredible movement, but it’s a flower; it will die tomorrow if we don’t stay vigilant and visible.”
New Yorkers in particular may be guilty of disparaging overt, decades-old displays of pride, but it wasn’t always so.
Richard Burns, director of the LGBT Center in New York, remembers the rainbow flag in its infancy.
“I marched in the New York Pride March each year beginning in 1976, and I remember when the rainbow flag began to appear,” Burns said. “I think it presented an inspirational, idealistic vision of our community, our diversity, the gorgeousness of that diversity and what we needed to make sure we became.”
Over the years the inspiration for the flag has become part of gay folklore. Was Baker’s muse really Judy Garland and her anthem “Somewhere Over the Rainbow?”
“Oh yeah, right,” Baker said, as if to say, “Give me a break.”
“I come from the ‘60s, so [the flag’s] more about the Rolling Stones and their song ‘She’s a Rainbow,’” Baker said. “That era was a time when people were asserting themselves as artists in the true sense. But, I get the Garland thing, and being from Kansas, I double get it.”
In fact, Baker was born in Dorothy Gayle’s hometown in 1951. From 1970–1972, he served in the U.S. Army, where he was stationed in San Francisco and worked as a nurse.
After finding love, Baker came out of the closet. He also taught himself to sew and became increasingly involved in activism that came on the heels of the Stonewall Riots in 1969. He made banners for gay and anti-war street protest marches, which led him to Milk, whom he credits for inspiring his work with the message of hope. (Earlier this year, Baker re-created some of his early banners for Gus Van Sant’s biopic film “Milk,” starring Sean Penn and slated for a late-2008 release.)
Three decades later, Baker is still dazzled every time he sees the rainbow flag—but it’s not because he created it.
“I look at it, not going, ‘I did that,’ but ‘we did this,’” Baker said.
When he sees the flag on a storefront, for example, he thinks, “I didn’t put it on their building. Those people probably don’t have a clue as to who I am. But, they love the flag for whatever reason.”
Did Baker envision the rainbow flag would become such a phenomenon after it was sewn together?
“From the very first day,” Baker said. “It was like a bolt of lightning hitting you. I had this cosmic revelation that this thing that I had made was going to be my life.
Mick Hicks, a photojournalist who has documented everything from LGBT politicos to porn stars, said Baker is responsible for the flag’s longevity.
“I don’t think that would’ve happened if Gilbert hadn’t pushed it,” Hicks said. “Gilbert was great at creating photo-ops before they were even called photo-ops.”
One thing he didn’t do, though, was trademark the flag. It’s in the public domain—just as he always intended it to be. “I remember walking down the street, trying to figure out how I’m going to pay the rent next month, and then seeing rainbow dog collars and thinking, ‘Damn! If only I owned this!’ But I don’t. It was not about making money for me, but it certainly did spawn an industry,” Baker said.
Though times have changed since the birth of the flag, Baker said every generation will always have one thing in common.
“We all share this moment of personal liberation,” Baker said. “Somewhere in our lives we come out to ourselves; we all of a sudden embrace who we really are. We reject the shame and the oppression. That moment in every LGBT life when you know who you are and accept who you are, that is the moment we all share.”
Baker still remembers a moment that changed his life. It came one evening in 1994, while standing on the Christopher St. Pier looking over the Hudson River. He thought, “This is my spiritual home.”
Though he was comfortable in the Bay Area, where he lived for 24 years, he realized there was more to life than just being comfortable.
“New York is the center of everything. San Francisco is about being gay,” Baker said. “New York is about everything—it’s about fashion, politics, media and finance. It opened my eyes in a big way, and I felt new.”
Interestingly, Baker had never visited the Big Apple prior to 1994. It took Stonewall’s 25th anniversary to summon him. To mark that occasion, he created a mile long rainbow flag that measured 30 x 5280 ft. and was carried by 5,000 people. It broke the world’s record for the largest flag. Since then Baker broke his own record. In 2003 he stretched a rainbow flag from sea to sea from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean in Key West.
Baker may not be a household name, but he’s touched many lives with his art.
“Just to sit and talk to him is like talking to a living history of our community,” said Cathy Renna, managing partner of Renna Communications, said. “He’s woven into the history of our community in much of the same way as the flag is. He really grasps the concept of unity and diversity and how we as a community do need to come together and understand our differences and understand how they make us stronger.”
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TRUE COLORS
Each color on the flag has a significant meaning:
Pink: Sex
Red: Life
Orange : Healing
Yellow: Sunlight
Green: Nature
Turquoise: Magic
Blue: Serenity
Purple: Spirit
Over the years, pink and the turquoise were removed because it was too expensive to print eight colors.
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For more information on Gilbert Baker, visit gilbertbaker.com. To
learn more about Absolut’s campaign, visit www.absolut.com/colors/
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