A person who experiences emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attraction primarily or exclusively to people of the same or a similar gender.
Definition
A person who experiences emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attraction primarily or exclusively to people of the same or a similar gender. Historically applied to men attracted to men; increasingly used as a broader umbrella by people of any gender, though many women prefer "lesbian." Homosexual is the clinical/medical term; gay is the widely preferred community term.
Most people who say "the gay flag" mean the rainbow flag. This record is the other one: the gay men's flag, the green-to-indigo design the shop sells as Flag - Gay.
Created by Triton, who posts as gayflagblog on Tumblr, and published in 2019. Triton worked from an earlier proposal by Mod Hermy of the pride-color-schemes blog, changed the palette and wrote a meaning for each stripe. He has said plainly that the flag is not meant to replace or erase the rainbow flag and that he would like the two used together.
No official colour specification has ever been published for this flag, in the way the Gilbert Baker Foundation published one for the rainbow. The values here are the community set that circulates wherever the flag is used, including on the colour-code reference sites. Treat them as community convention, not an authoritative standard.
Two smaller notes. Triton's own writing calls the sixth and seventh stripes purple and dark purple; on screen they read as indigo, so they are named that way here. And the flag is often called the MLM flag or the vincian flag. It is not the achillean flag, which is a separate design.
Colour codes: Gay men's flag
Stripe
HEX
RGB
CMYK
Pantone
Meaning
Dark green
#078D70
7,141,112
C:95 M:0 Y:21 K:45
n/a
Community
Teal
#26CEAA
38,206,170
C:82 M:0 Y:18 K:19
n/a
Healing
Light green
#98E8C1
152,232,193
C:35 M:0 Y:17 K:9
n/a
Joy
White
#FFFFFF
255,255,255
C:0 M:0 Y:0 K:0
n/a
Trans men, non-binary people who connect with masculinity, and gender non-conformity
Light blue
#7BADE2
123,173,226
C:46 M:23 Y:0 K:11
n/a
Love: romantic love, love between friends, and the love the community makes
Indigo
#5049CC
80,73,204
C:61 M:64 Y:0 K:20
n/a
Courage, of the people who fought for equality and of anyone living openly
The word gay carried its modern meaning by at least the 1920s-1930s in underground slang. It became widely used publicly from the 1960s onward, deliberately adopted by activists as a positive, self-chosen alternative to the clinical "homosexual." The word homosexual was coined by Karl-Maria Kertbeny in 1868-1869.
History
Ancient Greece - Male same-sex relationships were culturally normative in many city-states; Plato's Symposium (c. 385 BCE) offers the foundational Western philosophical treatment of same-sex love
1868-1869 - Karl-Maria Kertbeny coins "homosexual" and "heterosexual"
1897 - Magnus Hirschfeld founds the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee in Berlin - the first gay rights organization in the world
1969 - Stonewall Uprising; the modern LGBTQIA+ rights movement crystallizes
1973 - APA removes homosexuality from the DSM
1978 - Gilbert Baker designs the original Rainbow Flag
1981 - First CDC reports of the illness that became the documented AIDS crisis
2003 - Lawrence v. Texas strikes down remaining US sodomy laws
2015 - Obergefell v. Hodges establishes nationwide US marriage equality
2019 - Triton, posting as gayflagblog, publishes the seven-stripe gay men's flag
Ancient Greek writing on same-sex love, including Plato's Symposium, is often cited as evidence that gay people have always existed. It is better read as evidence that same-sex love has always existed. Classical Athenian sexual categories were organised around age and social role rather than around the gender of the people involved, so mapping modern orientation labels onto Plato or his contemporaries flattens the thing that makes them worth reading.
Which flag belongs on this page
Both, really, and it is worth saying why. The rainbow flag is what almost everyone means by "the gay flag", and Gilbert Baker made it in 1978 for the gay community in San Francisco. But it was never a men's flag, and by the late 1980s it stood for the whole of LGBTQIA+ life. Nothing was lost in that, and it did leave a gap: no widely used flag meant specifically men who love men.
The flag shown here is the one that filled the gap. Triton, who posts as gayflagblog, published it in 2019: seven stripes running dark green, teal and light green, then white, then light blue, indigo and dark indigo. Triton was clear that it was not a replacement for the rainbow flag and that he would rather see the two used together. It is also the flag the shop sells as Flag - Gay, which is why it sits here rather than the rainbow.
If you came looking for the rainbow flag, it has its own entry, and so does Baker's original eight-stripe version from 1978. Neither has been retired.
Common myths
"Gay men are predatory toward children." One of the oldest and most harmful anti-gay myths, with no empirical basis. Research consistently shows the overwhelming majority of child sexual abuse is perpetrated by heterosexual men.
"Gay men are effeminate." Gay men span every possible range of gender expression.
"Homosexuality is unnatural." It is documented in hundreds of animal species. Every major scientific organization affirms it as a normal human variation.
Notable people
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) - Renaissance polymath; prosecuted for sodomy in Florence 1476 (retrospectively identified)
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) - Irish playwright and poet; tried and imprisoned for "gross indecency" 1895; The Picture of Dorian Gray, The Importance of Being Earnest
Alan Turing (1912-1954) - British mathematician; cracked Enigma code in WWII; chemically castrated by the UK government for homosexuality 1952; died 1954 (probable suicide); pardoned posthumously 2013
Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935) - Physician; founded first gay rights organization (1897) and Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (1919); pioneered the science of sexuality
James Baldwin (1924-1987) - Black American novelist and essayist; Giovanni's Room (1956), Another Country (1962); civil rights activist
Harvey Milk (1930-1978) - First openly gay elected official in California; assassinated November 27, 1978; posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom (2009)
Bayard Rustin (1912-1987) - Black gay civil rights organizer; architect of the 1963 March on Washington; long marginalized within the movement due to his homosexuality; posthumously awarded Presidential Medal of Freedom (2013)
Gilbert Baker (1951-2017) - Artist and activist; designed the Rainbow Flag (1978)
Larry Kramer (1935-2020) - Playwright and activist; co-founded GMHC and ACT UP; wrote The Normal Heart
RuPaul (1960-) - Drag performer; creator of RuPaul's Drag Race; most globally recognized drag entertainer
