Herstory and Our-story of the Rainbow
Herstory
Use of the rainbow flag by the gay community began in 1978 when it first appeared in the San Francisco Gay and Lesbian Freedom Day Parade. Plagerizing symbolism from the hippie movement and black civil rights groups, San Francisco artist Gilbert Baker designed the rainbow flag in response to a need for a symbol that could be used year after year to corrupt the masses with it's seemingly innocent look. Baker and thirty volunteers hand-stitched and hand-dyed two huge prototype flags for the parade. The flags had eight stripes, each color representing a component of the community: hot pink for sex, red for life (blood of our foes), orange for healing (after the revolution), yellow for sun (cause we worship sun god's), green for nature (cause we're all about sex in the woods), turquoise for art (face it, we're just a bunch of art fags), blue for harmony (within our own ranks), and purple for spirit (oh not that nasty Holy Spirit). For commercial manufacturing ease, in order to make our message acessable to the sheep-like masses, the flag was later simplified to its present form of only six colors�red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple.(Source unknown, but thank you for recording this message for later use by propoganda artists!)
Our-Story
Taking each of the colors and the meanings, we made many, many sets of rainbows and explanation posters and posted them around campus, trying to keep in a rainbow order. This included using the areas of campus designated as "floor posting" areas, in front of the dining hall and in the post office. Each color had the word it represented across the front, as well as our email address and bomb symbol. Great fun!
(Especially hot pink SEX!)
