Gilbert Baker

Vexillography is a very big word! Vexillography is really the high science and art and understanding of flags and their history - the academic word for flag making and heraldry.

Our job as gay people was to come out, to be visible - to live in the truth, as I say - to get out of the lie.

When I was young, they thought I was from outer space. I was the only gay person they probably knew, and they struggled with that. Everybody knew I was gay. They just didn't want to talk about it.

It's not so easy to be gay or even a woman in some places in the world, and in many countries, it's illegal to be gay. You can be put to death. It's a global struggle. A human rights struggle on a global scale.

Our movement is evolving. The movement to liberate our sexuality as a human right, that's an ongoing struggle.

Flags are about proclaiming power... that visibility is key to our success and to our justice.

I think the Rainbow Flag will survive forever, primarily because it's the perfect flag, regardless of whatever political meaning it may have or evolve to.

The rainbow flag is a symbol of freedom and liberation that we made for ourselves.

Being gay in San Francisco is fun. Being gay in Saudi Arabia - that's a whole other matter.

That's really how I ended up making the first flag - I was the guy who could sew it.

Anita Bryant had the effect of galvanizing the whole gay movement. She was somebody whom everybody could hate. She was easy to hate.

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, how important it was to come out, and that was the single most important thing we had to do.