There were long-haired, lithe girls in belly-dance get-ups, pink-haired punks safety-pinned together, hippie suburbanites, movie stars so beautiful they left you dumbstruck, muscle gayboys with perfect mustaches, butch dykes in blue jeans, and fairies of all genders in thrift-store dresses. Everyone was there: North Beach beatniks and barrio zoots, the bored bikers in black leather, teenagers in the back row kissing. The crowd was as much a part of the show as the band. We’d shake our hips like Tina Turner, acid cheerleaders twirling in psychedelic funkadelic circles. “Cleve and I danced the same way we always raised our arms up over our heads, snapping our fingers like Diana Ross. Later that week at the Winterland Ballroom… Gay people were tribal, individualistic, a global collective that was expressing itself in art and politics. They were primarily nationalistic, territorial, iconic propaganda - all things we questioned in the ‘70s. I thought how most flags represented a place. I thought of the emotional connection they hold. I discovered the depth of their power, their transcendent, transformational quality. After the orgy of bunting and hoopla surrounding the Bicentennial, I thought of flags in a new light. On every level, it functioned as a message. It was everywhere, from pop art to fine art, from tacky souvenirs to trashy advertising. The American Bicentennial celebration put the focus on the American flag. I had considered all flag-waving and patriotism in general to be a dangerous joke. In the past, when I had thought of a flag, I saw it as just another icon to lampoon. This was our new revolution: a tribal, individualistic, and collective vision. I thought a gay nation should have a flag too, to proclaim its own idea of power.Īs a community, both local and international, gay people were in the midst of an upheaval, a battle for equal rights, a shift in status where we were now demanding power, taking it.
I thought of the vertical red, white, and blue tricolor from the French Revolution and how both flags owed their beginnings to a riot, a rebellion, or revolution. I thought of the American flag with its thirteen stripes and thirteen stars, the colonies breaking away from England to form the United States.
We all felt that we needed something that was positive, that celebrated our love.Īs Artie implored, I looked at the flags flying on the various government buildings around the Civic Center. It functioned as a Nazi tool of oppression. Adolph Hitler conceived the pink triangle during World War II as a stigma placed on homosexuals in the same way the Star of David was used against Jews. But it represented a dark chapter in the history of same-sex rights. Artie began to press me to come up with a new symbol for what he had called “the dawn of a new gay consciousness and freedom.” Both he and Harvey had brought this up to me before.Īt this point, the pink triangle was the symbol for the gay movement.
After the movie, we all walked over to Civic Center Plaza to look at the neoclassic buildings. One day, we went to the Strand Theater on Market Street to see Citizen Kane. We went to see films several times a week. My friend Artie Bressan, Jr., was a filmaker who had just made a documentary of the 1977 Parade, titled “Gay USA.” He was a wild visionary who directed porn on the side to finance his 35mm documentaries. “To get over Tandy, I devoted myself further to activism and went to the movies. Red represents life orange, healing yellow, sunlight green, nature blue, peace and harmony purple, spirit light blue, light pink and white, trans individuals black and brown, marginalized QPOC communities black, those living with HIV, those no longer living and those surrounded by stigma.Here Gilbert recalls an evening with his friends Cleve Jones and filmmaker Artie Bressan in early 1978, after his Christmas breakup with Tandy Belew. Quasar also explains the colors of the flag. The arrow points to the right to show forward movement, while being along the left edge shows that progress still needs to be made.” Quasar continues, “The trans flag and marginalized community stripes were shifted to the Hoist of the flag and given a new arrow shape. “The six-stripe LGBT flag should be separated from the newer stripes because of their difference in meaning, as well as to shift focus and emphasis to what is important in our current community climate.” On a Kickstarter looking to raise $14,000 to mass-produce the flag, Quasar explains the design. Quasar writes, “I felt there needed to be more thought put into the design and emphasis of the flag to give it more meaning.”