The problem with the Pride flag

Last month, the Pride flag was updated by the Intersex Equality Rights UK campaign group — the simple rainbow was not considered inclusive enough for intersex people. Other pressure groups had already added stripes for black people, brown people, trans people and people with Aids.

The Gay Pride flag first flew 43 years ago this week. It was sewn by the American gay activist Gilbert Baker, who performed under the drag name of ‘Busty Ross’, claiming kinship (of a sort) with the 18th-century Quaker upholsterer Betsy Ross, who sewed the first American flag. Baker had been asked by Harvey Milk, the most famous openly gay politician in America, to design a flag for the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade. Mass movements need symbols: until then, the only symbol the gay community had was the pink triangle and Milk thought, not unreasonably, that it was time to stop outsourcing their visual branding strategy to the Nazi concentration camps.