LGBTQIA+ Resources: Flags

The rainbow Pride flag was designed in 1978 by artist and gay rights activist Gilbert Baker. He came up with the design after prominent gay rights leader Harvey Milk urged him to create a new, positive symbol that the entire LGBTQIA+ community could rally behind. Baker thought a rainbow flag would better represent the beautiful diversity of the LGBTQIA+ community. He also considered the powerful symbolic significance of rainbows throughout history. (Source: Parade)

Designed by Daniel Quasar in 2018, it adds five new colors to emphasize progress around inclusion. The flag includes black and brown stripes to represent people of color, and baby blue, pink and white, which are used in the Transgender Pride Flag. (Source: USA Today)

Philadelphia redesigned the Pride flag in 2017 to include the colors brown and black in an effort to promote diversity and inclusion and to "honor the lives of our Black and brown LGBTQ siblings," the city said in a statement. Philadelphia's Office of LGBT Affairs partnered with Tierney, a Philadelphia PR agency, to redesign the flag as part of its new inclusivity campaign, #MoreColorMorePride. (Source: USA Today)

In the asexual Pride flag, the black stripe is for asexuality; the gray for the gray area in between sexual and asexual and demisexuality; the white for non-asexual partners and allies; and the purple for community. Asexuals or "aces" are people who usually do not feel sexually attracted to anyone. (Source: USA Today)

Created by Emily Gwen in 2018, the colors represent 'gender non-conformity' (dark orange), 'independence' (orange), 'community' (light orange), 'unique relationships to womanhood' (white), 'serenity and peace' (pink), 'love and sex' (dusty pink), and 'femininity' (dark rose). (Source: Old Dominion University)

The Bisexual Pride Flag, which activist Michael Page introduced in 1998, features pink (same-sex attraction), purple (attraction to all or multiple genders) and royal blue (attraction only to opposite sex). (Source: USA Today)

The pink stripes in the pansexual flag reference those who are attracted to women, while the blue references those who are attracted to men. Yellow stands for nonbinary attraction. (Source: USA Today)

Over the years, the rainbow LGBTQ flag has evolved to become increasingly inclusive. One of the most recent updates came in 2021, when Valentino Vecchietti of Intersex Equality Rights UK added a yellow triangle with a purple circle—the design of the Intersex Pride Flag—to the Progress Pride Flag. (Source: Reader's Digest)

The intersex flag features gender-neutral colors yellow and purple. The circle "represents wholeness, completeness and the intersex people’s potentiality," according to the University of Northern Colorado. Intersex is an umbrella term for people with variations in sex characteristics that don’t fit neatly in the binary of male or female. Some intersex people are born with varying reproductive anatomy or sex traits — some develop them later in life. About 1.7 percent of people are born intersex. (Source: USA Today)

Transgender activist Monica Helms made this flag in 1999. The light blue and light pink represent the colors baby girls and boys have traditionally been designated at birth and the white stands for intersex, transitioning or a neutral/undefined gender. (Source: USA Today)

Some Indigenous Americans identify as two-spirit individuals, meaning they fall outside the male-female binary, and this can be used to describe a person’s sexual, gender and/or spiritual identity. Though it’s not clear when it was first designed, the Two-Spirit Pride Flag uses two feathers to represent masculine and feminine identities. The circle symbolizes the unification of masculine and feminine identities into a separate gender, and the rainbow of colors represents modern LGBTQ identities. (Source: Reader's Digest)

Kyle Rowan is behind the nonbinary pride flag , released in 2014. The yellow is for those whose gender is outside the traditional binary; the white for those with all genders or multiple ones; the purple for those who identify as a male and female mix; and the black for those who don't have a gender. (Source: USA Today)

The flag, designed by JJ Poole in 2012, includes five stripes, representing femininity (pink), masculinity (blue), purple (both), black (all genders) and white (no gender). (Source: USA Today)

Made in 2011 by genderqueer writer Marilyn Roxie. The colors are lavender (a blue and pink combination, to stand for androgyny), white (agender) and chartreuse (not in the gender binary). (Source: USA Today)