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The first Bi Pride Flag was unveiled on Dec 5, 1998. The intent and purpose of the flag is to maximize bisexual pride and visibility. This bi flag is for free public and commercial use.
As a result of volunteer work I was doing for BiNet USA, it occurred to me that if bi people were going to be visible at home, pride events and political rallies, we needed a Bi Pride Flag!
At that time, there were, in my opinion, no suitable bisexual icons that were colorful or prominent enough to gain instant and long lasting recognition as a flag. At the time, there were bi angles - an inverted double triangle, the bi symbol - a 3 looped symbol, and various shaped symbols created to represent local groups of bi people.
There is no question that bi people have helped foster the gay and lesbian movement we have witnessed since the Stonewall riots of 1969. One problem for bisexuals remains their invisibility. This was also a problem for gays and lesbians prior to 1969 as very few were willing to "come out".
In 1978, Gilbert Baker of San Francisco, who I personally met in Italy at World Pride 2000, created the Rainbow Flag. Each color held it's own meaning and was intended to represent diversity of the gay and lesbian community. The effective mass visibility of this icon is indisputable.
Based on my own personal experience, the vast majority of bi people I have spoken with, feel no connection to the rainbow flag, the pink triangle, the black triangle, the Lambda symbol or the double-edged hatchet. These symbols are viewed as gay and lesbian icons, which was their initial intent. Search the history of the rainbow flag on the Internet and you will see what I mean.
It is my belief that bi people need their own flags and symbols to rally around. I believe GLBT (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered) People need to work together, but also need to uphold their own unique component of the GLBT equation.
In designing the Bi Pride Flag, I selected the colors and overlap pattern of the "bi angles" symbol. I selected, which to me, is the most attractive combination of pink, purple and blue. In flag-maker parlance this is magenta - PMS 226 (pink), lavender - PMS 258 (purple) and royal - PMS 286 (blue). I decided to make the top of the flag pink and would give it 40% of the vertical dimension. Purple, which is the resultant color when you overlap pink and blue, would be the middle stripe and would be 20% of the dimension. The lower 40% would be blue.
For digital graphics, the following are the RGB values:
214 (red) 2 (green) 112 (blue) making the pink.
155 (red) 79 (green) 150 (blue) making the purple.
0 (red) 56 (green) 168 (blue) making the blue. For web designers, that works out to:
#D60270 (pink), #9B4F96 (purple) and #0038A8 (blue). For printing:
Use the CMYK values your graphic program selects for each of the PMS keys indicated above. Or provide your printer with the PMS keys instead.
SYMBOLISM:
The pink color represents sexual attraction to the same sex only (gay and lesbian), the blue represents sexual attraction to the opposite sex only (straight) and the resultant overlap color purple represents sexual attraction to both sexes (bi). The key to understanding the symbolism in the Bi Pride Flag is to know that the purple pixels of color blend unnoticeably into both the pink and blue, just as in the 'real world' where most bi people blend unnoticeably into both the gay/lesbian and straight communities.
The Bi Pride Flag is the only bisexual symbol not patented, trademarked or service marked. Please use the exact PMS colors listed above. If we are going to be effective with this flag, we need to be consistent with our colors. This flag continues to be distributed on a global scale through www.BiPrideStore.com , many leading pride wholesale companies, and many family owned pride stores. In it's short history, the Bi Pride Flag has been visible in many important GLBT events world-wide. A few of these events may be seen above under Bi Events Photos .