LGBT flags are all in Russian. What is LGBT - how it stands, what it means, as well as the symbolism and colors of the flag of the LGBT movement

Many people mistakenly believe that the rainbow flag is nothing more than a symbol of homosexuality. However, this is not entirely true, as I recently became convinced of.
The rainbow flag today is a symbol of the great diversity of people, cultures, religions and universal tolerance for each other. Moreover, the rainbow plays the role of one of the important symbols in world religions. For example, in the Bible it symbolizes the union between God and man, and also means transformation, different states of consciousness, the meeting of Heaven with Earth, a bridge between the world and paradise. And Arab Druze (one of the branches of Ismailism) consider the rainbow flag a symbol of their community.

During the Peasants' War in Germany (1524-1525), the German reformer Thomas Münzer chose the rainbow as a symbol of the Eternal Divine Union, and in April 1525 a long, approximately 13-meter white flag was made, on which a rainbow was placed and a quote from the Bible: “Verbum domini maneat in eternum”, which translated into Russian means “The Word of God is eternal.” The peasant uprising was suppressed, the cunning German was executed by cutting off his head, and the situation of the peasants themselves only worsened, as the embittered nobles tightened the screws on them even more and with particular zeal began to impose taxes on the villagers.

Since 1961, the rainbow flag has been used as the flag of the international peace movement "Bandiera della Pace". The author of the flag was the Italian pacifist Aldo Capitini. The peculiarity of this flag is that the color stripes are in reverse order, i.e. from purple to red, and also on the flag there is an inscription in Italian “PACE”, or in other languages ​​- “Peace”, “Paix”, “Shalom”, “Peace”, etc. The flag was first used at a peace demonstration on September 24, 1961, and in 2003, during the Iraq War, many Italians came out in support of the Iraqi civilian population and followed the call “Pace da tutti i balconi” (“Peace from all balconies” ), hung flags on their balconies and walls of their houses.

The Jewish Autonomous Region, in which only 1.2% of Jews live, has a flag that is a white cloth, on the horizontal axis of which there is a colored stripe symbolizing a rainbow.

There are other rainbow flags. For example, among the Incas.

The thing that gets me the most, of course, is the pixelated flag of the Aymara Indians. If you look closely, you will notice that it is essentially a modification of the banner of the Inca Empire, the people of which these Indians belong to.

Or this flag. An unknowing person might think that this is a symbol of gay Britain, but this is not so. This is the flag of Batasuna, a separatist Basque National Socialist party active in Spain and France and banned due to its links to the terrorist group ETA.

Well, now about pederasts. The rainbow became a global banner for gays and lesbians in the 70s, when artist Gilbert Baker, borrowing the rainbow from hippies, proposed it as a symbol of the gay pride parade, which was organized in San Francisco in 1979. According to the artist's plan, the flag should have eight stripes to demonstrate the diversity of this movement. Each stripe symbolized one of the components of the ideology of the gay movement: hot pink - sexuality, red - life, orange - health, yellow - sun, green - nature, turquoise - art, indigo - harmony, purple - fortitude and spirituality. However, due to imperfect printing technologies, pink and turquoise had to be abandoned and removed from the flag, and indigo replaced with blue. Thus, the flag became six-stripe, and homosexuals lost their sexuality and were left without art. :)

Illustration copyright EPA Image caption Gilbert Baker, creator of the gay movement's symbol of the rainbow flag, died in New York on March 31

In light of the recent death of American artist and gay activist Gilbert Baker, we remember his most famous creation - the rainbow flag of the LGBT movement. The rainbow flag is widely known today. Few people, however, think about where it came from, who invented it and what the symbolism is behind it.

Frankly, I didn’t know about it and didn’t think about it. Until, two days late, I heard the news about the death in New York at the age of 65 of the author of the flag design, American artist and gay activist Gilbert Baker.

Baker was not a major artist, he did not leave behind a large and significant art legacy, and if it were not for the rainbow flag, it is unlikely that his death would have been an event for anyone except his family and friends.

There are, however, such simple design solutions - these include the hammer and sickle (who knows today the author of this sign, the artist Evgeny Kamzolin?) or the sign of the international peace movement (does anyone remember its author, the British artist Gerald Holtom?), which outlive their creators, which few people think of as works of design art, but which become powerful symbols of political, social, public movements.

So, of course, is Gilbert Baker's rainbow flag.

Background

Like many other openly gay men of his generation, Baker came to San Francisco in 1972 after serving in the army. It was there that the American gay movement was born, and very soon the Californian city became its recognized center.

There, Baker met Harvey Milk, an activist who made the fight for gay civil rights the core of his political platform. To the surprise of many and to the incredible joy of his many associates, Milk succeeded on this path. He became the first openly gay person in US history to be elected to an elected political post in the San Francisco city legislature.

In November 1978, Milk was killed - his life and death became the subject of the famous feature film "Harvey Milk", for playing the leading role in which Hollywood star Sean Penn received an Oscar in 2008.

Shortly before his death, however, it was Harvey Milk who asked the 25-year-old Baker to create a flag for the growing gay movement. The only artistic experience in Baker’s baggage by that time was the slogans, banners and posters he actively created for demonstrations against the Vietnam War and marches of gay activists.

Flag - origins and symbolism

There are many theories about why the rainbow became a symbol of the gay movement. Here is the most beautiful of them. The so-called “Stonewall riots” - riots and clashes with police in the New York gay bar Stonewall, considered the beginning of the organized struggle of homosexuals for their rights - occurred at the end of June 1969. On June 22 of the same year, the famous Hollywood actress and singer Judy Garland, best known for her role as the girl Dorothy in the film “The Wizard of Oz” and the song from this film “Over the Rainbow,” died. Garland was one of the first “icons” of the gay movement, the “Elvis of homosexuals,” and many who gathered at the Stonewall bar on the night of June 28 came straight from the funeral of their favorite artist.

Another theory is that Baker borrowed his idea from the so-called “race flags” - five horizontal stripes (red, white, brown, yellow and black) that were popular in the 60s during anti-war demonstrations on university campuses. This flag was popular among hippies, one of whose heroes was the famous poet and pioneer of the gay movement Allen Ginsberg. Under the influence of Ginsberg, Baker decided to use just such an idea.

Be that as it may, Baker’s flag already consisted of eight horizontal stripes, and each color, according to the author’s idea, was a symbol of one or another important component of human existence:

• Pink - sexuality;
• Red - life;
• Orange - healing;
• Yellow - Sun;
• Green - nature;
• Turquoise - art;
• Dark blue - harmony;
• Purple is the human spirit.

Subsequently, however, he explained his choice much more simply: “We needed something beautiful, something of ours. The rainbow is great because it reflects our diversity in terms of race, gender, age and so on.”

Modifications, Variations and Acceptance

Thirty volunteers helped Baker hand-dye and sew the first two rainbow flags used by activists for the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade on June 25, 1978.

Everyone liked the flag, but attempts to put its production on an industrial basis encountered unexpected difficulties. The pink color Baker selected turned out to be very rare and expensive, and had to be abandoned.

The next modification occurred in 1979. During the next parade, flags were hung vertically from lampposts on San Francisco's main street, Market Street. However, the central stripe was almost completely hidden behind the pillar itself. To prevent this from happening, the number of stripes had to become even, and since then the flag has six of them - red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple.

At the height of the AIDS epidemic, activists came up with another variation of the flag - with a black stripe pasted on it. Shortly before his death from AIDS in 1988, nationally known Vietnam War veteran, Purple Heart recipient, and gay activist Leonard Maltovich proposed that the black stripes should be removed and burned when medicine was able to defeat the disease.

In 1994, to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, Baker was commissioned to create the world's largest rainbow flag. He received a similar order in 2003, this time to celebrate the quarter-century anniversary of the flag itself. A banner 10 meters wide and two kilometers long decorated the gay pride parade in Key West, Florida. It was included in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's largest flag. After the parade, the flag was cut into pieces and sent to gay communities around the world.

In 2004, a group of Australian LGBT activists took a boat to the uninhabited Coral Sea Islands Territory, declared it independent from Australia, proclaimed the islands the Gay and Lesbian Kingdom of the Coral Sea Islands, and the rainbow flag as the official flag of the new state.

In 2015, the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York acquired the rainbow flag as part of its permanent exhibition.

And on June 26, 2015, to commemorate the legalization of gay marriage in all 50 US states, the White House was illuminated with the colors of the rainbow flag.

The idea for this post came to me a long time ago, but I only got around to it now. To be honest, I was surprised that no one created a similar post. Okay, I won't delay. And the first flag that we will look at is:

Rainbow flag

This flag is well known among YA participants, and indeed in the world in general, although not many people love it...

The Rainbow Flag (Pride Flag - Freedom Flag) was designed by Gilbert Baker specifically for the 1978 San Francisco Gay Pride. He described its meaning this way:

The original idea of ​​the rainbow flag is liberation. The opportunity to break free, going beyond the boundaries created by fear and the desire to “conform to the norms”, the right to declare one’s sexuality without shame and fear of retribution from those who dictate “ethical laws”.

The rainbow flag lives because it represents us all in all our diversity and beauty... Each flag symbolizes an idea. The rainbow flag stands for common sense and courageous action.

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We conclude:

The flag is meant to represent unity in diversity, beauty and joy of the LGBT community.

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The next symbol we'll look at is:

Pink triangle

The oldest and one of the most recognizable symbols of the LGBT community. It owes its origins to Nazi Germany, where homosexuals were among the victims of the Holocaust. According to various estimates, in the Third Reich, according to paragraph 175, from 50 to 100 thousand homosexual men were sent to prison, and from 5 to 15 thousand people were deported to concentration camps (death camps). In concentration camps, such prisoners had a patch in the form of a pink triangle on their clothes.

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We conclude:

The pink triangle was created to humiliate representatives of sexual minorities.

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Bisexual flag

For those in the bunker:

Bisexuality is a person's sexual attraction to men and women.

The first bisexual pride flag was designed by Michael Pugh and first appeared on the 1st anniversary of BiCafe on December 5, 1998.

This is a rectangular flag of three horizontal stripes: a wide purple (lilac) stripe at the top, representing the field of attraction for homosexuals; a wide blue stripe at the bottom, representing the opposite field of attraction (heterosexuals), and a lavender stripe (purple) occupying the central part as a fusion of the two areas, which symbolizes attraction to both genders (bisexuals).

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We conclude:

The flag carries a deep meaning of pride for people with this unusual sexual orientation.

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Black triangle

Unlike gay men, who formed a separate group in concentration camps and wore a “pink triangle,” lesbians were not included in paragraph 175 of the criminal code. However, women were arrested for "anti-social behavior", which included feminism, lesbianism, and prostitution. Such women were marked with a “black triangle”. Today, the black triangle is used by lesbians as one of the symbols of the LGBT movement.

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What is sodom? This - contrary to popular belief - is not a state where people simply sin a lot. This is the state of society or an individual when sin is internally and externally legalized for them.

For several years now, the global sodomite community, which has taken the neutral-abstract abbreviation LGBT to denote its homo- and bisexual, as well as transgender content, has been using the rainbow as its symbol. But non-governmental organizations are one thing.

Another is when the government of a particular country uses a rainbow to glorify Sodom. Moreover, countries whose leaders constantly turn to God for support in their speeches, and a significant part of the population of which are truly believing Christians.

That's exactly what Barack Obama's administration did late last week, ordering the White House to be lit up in rainbow colors to show support for the US Supreme Court decision legalizing same-sex marriage throughout the country. At the same time, Secretary of State John Kerry announced Washington’s intention to spread sodom further throughout our planet.

It is known how the LGBT community explains its use of the rainbow symbol: they say that people are different, by analogy with the components of sunlight, nature or even God made them that way, and without each individual there will be no unity of humanity. Moreover, being part of the LGBT community, they argue, brings beauty and joy and is a source of pride. All of the above is a sinister distortion of the original meaning.

The true meaning of the rainbow symbol is associated for everyone who honors the Bible, or at least the Old Testament, with the end of the flood. Having covered the earth with water, as we remember, God destroyed the antediluvian humanity, whose cumulative sin became unatoneable, with the exception of the righteous Noah and his loved ones, and subsequently restored order on earth. The rainbow arch that connected heaven and earth for the first time symbolized the post-Flood covenant of God and man.

It boils down to the promise that “all flesh will no longer be destroyed by the waters of the flood, neither will there be any more flood to destroy the earth” (Gen. 9:8-11). By the way, both of these words - rainbow and arch - have as their semantic basis the ancient Indo-European syllable "Rha" and its pair according to the principle of metathesis "Arh", which are also present in such words as Russian "paradise", "patriarch", " architecture", ancient Greek "arche" (the generating cause of all things), Arabic "rahman", "rahim" (merciful, merciful as epithets of Allah).

Yes, the rainbow symbolizes God’s mercy towards us and His willingness to forgive our sins, but in one case: if we realize the damage to our human nature, we are able to see the evil that, after the flood, operates in the world mostly not openly, but hiding behind goodness, we repent of our sins , we resist evil.

Those who persist in their sin, God teaches in a manner appropriate to the occasion: Ham for ridiculing and humiliating his parent - by assigning him to slavery to other descendants of Noah; the builders of the Tower of Babel - by the division of languages; the homosexuals of Sodom and Gomorrah - by fire...

God responded to the state of humanity at the end of Antiquity by sending His Son Jesus Christ into the world, through whom the New Testament was concluded with us, not abolishing, but fulfilling and developing the previous covenants.

You may or may not belong to any particular religion, but anyone who sees the presence of a Higher Principle in the world and the culture-forming role of religion in general and the Bible in particular cannot help but admit that the use of a rainbow as a symbol of the LGBT community is not “cute.” joke" and especially not a legitimate appeal to the symbolism of the universe. This is an outrage against the universe, the establishment of a world of sin as the rule. In fact, the adherents of this community act like Cain: they accompany their outrage against God’s will by demanding special treatment, a kind of safe conduct.

The incident with the rainbow is not the only case in world history of the use of a sacred symbol by those whose activities are aimed at the destruction of humanity. The same substitution was carried out in the first third of the 20th century in relation to the swastika symbol. Today this word for a Russian person, and for the majority of humanity, sounds disgusting, meaning Hitler, Nazis and scum, but this was not always the case. In the Russian Empire, the swastika as a symbol of the holy spirit was treated with respect. It was present, in particular, on household items of the last Russian emperor.

Are the plots far from each other? Was the Nazi regime cruel to homosexuals? I am sure that this is exactly what opponents of linking these stories into one trend will say. And yet we are talking about two components of the general offensive of inhumanity. Dressing the anti-human in the most “human” clothes is a very common technique of our days.

Take the imposition of juvenile justice on our society - an instrument for the destruction of the traditional family and the system of raising children in a paternal spirit. Or the thesis about the “expediency” of legalizing prostitution. This technique is generally in the spirit of those who live by the principle: “Everything that a person desires is natural, justified, and prohibitions cannot be considered in the categories that created human civilization.” Their number in the world is growing, and our country, unfortunately, is no exception. And here’s what else is important: the instigators of the world’s movement along the path of moral degradation know what they are doing.

How and in what sequence we should respond is up to each of us to decide, but among the first steps on this path is the protection of symbols. With each new distorted meaning, with each new defamed symbol, there is less light and more darkness in the world.

They called the rainbow the “LGBT flag” - and there was less light. They recognized that same-sex marriage is the norm - there is more darkness in the world. They refused to defend the purity of the images of Jesus Christ or the Prophet Muhammad, and agreed that by insulting them, someone was “exercising their right to free expression”—the darkness became even greater...

A rainbow must remain a rainbow, sin must remain sin, repentance must remain repentance. Rejection of moral and semantic degradation will preserve hope for life. Agreeing with her will mean death.

In June, LGBT parades are traditionally held around the world; On city streets you can see various flags, signs and symbols of the LGBT movement. These symbols are diverse in origin and meaning, but they are united by the main goal of making visible communities that have been pushed to the margins of society and erased from history. Moreover, in conditions of discrimination and suppression, these symbols defend people's right to self-respect and pride.
The pink and black triangles appeared during the difficult and terrible times of the Holocaust, but later became a sign of solidarity and the will to fight. Labrys is an ancient symbol that still retains its significance in people's lives. The rainbow flag was created as a sign that affirms the LGBT movement. But besides these, there are other symbols representing bisexuals, transgender people, people of leather culture and “bears” who, along with other groups, are part of the diverse LGBT community.

"Bears" form a special subculture in the gay community; they hold their own events and have their own code of conduct. Typically, bears are mature men with dense facial and chest hair; some are large-bodied and embody working-class masculinity in their appearance, although none of this is a requirement or the only indicator.
Bears are almost always gay or bisexual men, but recently their communities have also begun to include transgender men and those who eschew gender and sexual labels. Today, bear clubs exist in many countries around the world.
The International Bear Fraternity Flag was designed in 1995 by Craig Byrnes. The color of the stripes of this flag represents the color of the bears' hair.

Skin subculture flag

The "leather people" community consists of those interested in leather clothing and accessories, sadomasochism, bondage, domination, uniforms, rubber and other types of sexual fetishes.
The Leather Flag was designed by Henry Laster and first introduced by him at the international Mr. Leather competition in Chicago in 1989. This flag is most often seen in the gay community, but it is inclusive of all orientations.
Another name for the leather flag is “Black and Blue Flag with Love.”