Explained: Why The Pride Month Is Celebrated In June

The global celebration of the LGBTQ+ community —  Pride Month — kickstarted on Saturday.

June is commemorated as Pride Month when the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and the queer community celebrate love, diversity and acceptance.

Why is Pride Month celebrated in June?

As per the news agency Associated Press, this worldwide celebration initially began as Gay Pride Week in June 1970 to mark the first anniversary of the violent police raid at New York's gay bar, Stonewall Inn.

The raid, which took place on June 28, 1969, led to a series of protests. 

Later in 1999, the 42nd US President Bill Clinton proclaimed June as Gay and Lesbian Pride Month.

However, it is worth noting that not all major LGBTQ+ celebrations take place in June.

Some events fall outside June, including Tokyo's Rainbow Pride, which is celebrated in April, and Rio de Janeiro's Gay Pride Rio is observed in November.

Significance of the Rainbow Flag 

The Pride flag—Rainbow Flag—has become a universal symbol of the LGBTQ+ community, since its creation in 1978. Representing visibility, hope and diversity within the LGBTQ+ community, the rainbow flag was created by a tailor, Gilbert Baker, for the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade, as mentioned in a blog by the Department Of Mental Health, Los Angeles. 

Also, each colour of the rainbow flag has a unique meaning: 

• Red: Life

• Orange: Healing

• Yellow: Sunlight

• Green: Nature

• Blue (Indigo): Serenity

• Purple (Violet): Spirit

Why a Rainbow Flag

Talking about how he came up with the rainbow flag, Mr Gilbert, in a 2015 interview with the Museum Of Modern Art, had said, “Harvey Milk was a friend of mine, an important gay leader in San Francisco in the '70s, and he carried a really important message about how important it was to be visible”

He added, “A flag really fits that mission, because that's a way of proclaiming your visibility, or saying, 'This is who I am!'”

Mr Gilbert said, “I was in the right place at the right time to make the thing that we needed. It was necessary to have the Rainbow Flag because up until that we had the pink triangle from the Nazis—it was the symbol that they would use [to denote gay people].”