Gay Pride was not born of a need to celebrate being gay, but their right to exist without persecution. There have been many symbols that represent the oppression the gay communities have felt, the celebration of who thy are, and the fight they had to fight. One of the originals, the pink triangle was first used by Hitler to identify gay males in Nazi concentration camps, and another, the black triangle, was similarly used to identify lesbians and others deemed “asocial”. The pink and black triangle symbols were reclaimed by the LGBTQ communities in the early 1980s to signify their strength of spirit and willingness to survive oppression. As they gained acceptance of their rights, the symbols of oppression were gradually being replaced by the symbols of celebration. By far the most colourful of the symbols is the Rainbow flag. The many couples represent the diversity of the community. The first rainbow flag was designed in 1978 by Gilbert Baker, a San Francisco artist, in response to calls by activists for a symbol for the community. Baker used the five-striped “Flag of the Race” as his inspiration, and designed a flag with eight stripes: pink, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. In November 1978, the people of San Francisco were stunned when the city’s first openly gay supervisor, Harvey Milk, was assassinated. Wanting to show their strength, the community decided to use Bakers flag as a symbol of strength. They had to eliminate the indigo colour in order to divide the colours evenly among the parade, creating the six stripe flag that we know today. Soon after, in the early years of the AIDS epidemic, AIDS activists designed a “Victory over AIDS” flag consisting of the standard six-stripe rainbow flag with a black stripe across the bottom. Leonard Matlovich, himself dying of AIDS-related illness, suggested that upon a cure for AIDS being discovered, the black stripes be removed from the flags and burned. Many variations of the flag have been created over the years, adding stripes for certain movements, removing some for other. I believe this symbol has ensured strength within the LGBTQ community, without it, many movements might not have been as effective. A symbol helps create a unity within a movement, and the colourful flag that the LGBTQ community used has helped them immensely to overcome the oppression, fight deadly battles, and celebrate who they are, as well as be proud of it.