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Pink triangle flags (gay pride)

Last modified: 2005-10-15 by antonio martins
Keywords: triangle (pink) | triangle: up | nazi | canton | silence=death |
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Origin of the symbol

The rainbow is a symbol of gay pride, as opposed to gay liberation, which used the pink triangle on various colored fields.
Jim Ferrigan, 14 Feb 2003

Although it was first used in Nazi Germany to identify gay males in concentration camps, the pink triangle only received widespread use as a gay pop icon in the early 1980s.
Christopher Pinette, 12 Jun 1996, quoting [ans93]

The pink triangle dates from Nazi-era stigmatization of homosexual prisoners by forcing them to wear the pink triangle much as Jews had to wear the yellow star. The pink triangle was never used, at least for gays, before the nazis, as far as I know. The use now is an attempt to turn a stigma into a mark of pride.
Al Kirsch, 30 Jun 2002


On white background

Triangle flag
image by Jorge Candeias, 30 Jun 2002

On black background

Triangle flag
image by Jorge Candeias, 30 Mar 2005

The local variants I have seen of this flag (Baltimore & District of Columbia, United States) are black with an inverted pink triangle.
Steve Kramer, 01 Jul 2002

With "SILENCE = DEATH"

Triangle flag
image by Jorge Candeias and António Martins, 30 Mar 2005

A further variant sets the triangle slightly closer to the top edge to make room for the inscription "SILENCE = DEATH" in white underneath, a political statement obviously alluding to the mentioned pride symbolism.
Steve Kramer, 01 Jul 2002

The "SILENCE = DEATH" slogan is not so much an allusion to the Nazi persecution I referred to but to society’s alleged silence about AIDS; the slogan is (obviously) of recent vintage. But it's all of a piece, I grant.
Al Kirsch, 01 Jul 2002


On olive background

Triangle flag
image by Jorge Candeias, 30 Mar 2005

Olive green (or olive drab) field with a large triangle, point down, centered on the flag; the triangle striped red-orange-yellow-green-blue-purple, i.e. the colors of the basic Gay Pride Flag. Dimensions appeared to be 2 feet at the hoist by 3 feet on the fly, with the triangle about 18 inches high, i.e. half the hoist dimensions. Seen in Provincetown, the US East Coast’s gay Mecca.
Tom Gregg, 20 Aug 2001


On the hoist of a rainbow flag

(long)

Rainbow flag
image by António Martins, 31 May 1999

A pink triangle is sometimes located in the hoist of the Pride Flag.
Don Hagemann, 04 May 1996

(short)

Rainbow flag
image by António Martins, 31 May 1999

I’ve seen this in several variations, the two extremes of it being with the triangle extending to the middle of the flag (thus defined by it’s hoist side half diagonals), up, and with a “rectangle” triangle (the fly angle is 90 deg.), above.
António Martins, 31 May 1999


On the canton of a rainbow flag

(plain)

Rainbow flag
image by António Martins, 16 Jan 2000

Pink triangle in the upper hoist, usually point upward, is an often variation.
Steve Kramer, 06 May 1996

(blue)

Rainbow flag
image by António Martins, 16 Jan 2000

As also pink triangle in a canton of blue or black. Blue is an obvious play off the U.S. flag; black is a color associated with lesbianism — a black triangle on pink is also sometimes used as a lesbian symbol.
Steve Kramer, 06 May 1996

(black)

Rainbow flag
image by António Martins, 16 Jan 2000