The Ancient Greeks even sanctioned relationships between teenage boys and older men as a rite of passage for males just entering puberty.
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Unlike in other ancient cultures, the Greeks considered free adult male sexual attraction to be both normal and natural.
The Ancient Greeks produced one of the earliest well-developed examples of gay art. Like the rainbow flag, the pink triangle is now an image found on pride badges, stickers, and t-shirts, and is a common symbol used to advertise gay-friendly events and activities. Though not everyone embraces the pink triangle as a positive symbol of gay pride, the triangle and inverted triangle have gone through countless variations and remain popular. Gay prisoners in Nazi concentration camps were forced to wear the pink triangle to show that they were homosexuals, which meant that they often received worse treatment and as a result were less likely to survive the camps. In an UK Gay News op-ed piece, Baker wrote: “In my view the rainbow flag is unfinished, as the movement it represents, an arc that begins well before me, its breadth far broader than all of our experiences put together, reaching the farthest corners of the world with a message of solidarity and a beacon of hope for those who follow in our footsteps.”īorn out of the violence of the Nazi regime, the pink triangle is a reclaimed symbol of oppression now used to show LGBT pride and increase understanding. Gilbert Baker himself encourages the LGBT community to continue to remake the flag for ourselves. Since then, the now-common six color flag is only one of many variations, all of which symbolize the diversity and inclusiveness of the LGBT movement. The original version of the flag had eight colors, each of which stood for concepts including healing, sunlight, nature, and spirit. The rainbow flag has changed dramatically since its first hand-dyed creation by Gilbert Baker and his boyfriend Jomar Teng.
A (very) BRIEF HISTORY OF LGBTQ ART AND SYMBOLISM