As practicing Buddhists, we cherish the unique potential of each individual, and each individual’s unique mission in the world that only they can accomplish. We believe that each person has the ability to contribute positive value to society in their own unique way.
GBF welcomes people of all races, backgrounds, and gender and sexual identities…
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The RAINBOW FLAG is first displayed in the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade. While Gilbert Baker is widely recognized as the creator of the Rainbow Flag, the origins of the flag remain controversial.
The late activist and author, Lee Mentley asserted -- we think correctly -- that it was made by artists from Eureka Noe Valley Artist’s Coalition, The Hula Palace, and Gay Freedom Day community volunteers in Top Floor Gallery.
It was the summer of 1978, and the Gay Community Center in San Francisco swarmed with dozens of young people, flitting between ironing boards, sewing machines and trash cans filled with colorful dye. They had been tasked with making two enormous flags to fly above the city's Gay Freedom Day Parade, and they wanted something bright. Something inclusive. Something hopeful.
Unbeknownst to them, their colorful project, the rainbow flag, would become the international symbol for LGBTQI rights, seen practically everywhere: atop City Hall in West Hollywood, in countries like Uganda, where homosexuality is still illegal in the Target clothing aisle during Pride Month.
The design and sewing of the first rainbow flag often is solely credited to the self-described "gay Betsey Ross," Gilber Baker -- a well-known activist and drag queen who died in 2017 -- with little or no mention of the artists and volunteers who helped that summer.
Lynn Segerblom, who co-chaired the 1978 Gay Freedom Day decorations committee that year with Baker, remembers the conceptualization and creation of the rainbow flag as a joyous collaboration with friends. Segerblom and Paul Langlotz, who both witnessed the making of the giant banners, said Baker had been their friend and roommate but as soon as he started traveling the world promoting the flag, the stories of the other artists eventually fell by the wayside. In the interest of history, without Segerblom and a seamster, James McNamara, who died of HIV-AIDS in 1999, the flags wouldn't have happened.
Mentley, in his recent book, The Princess of Castro Street [ISBN-10: 1533323844 - ISBN-13: 978-1533323842], disputes the origin story of the flag told by Gilbert Baker who claimed the flag design as his own. According to Mentley:
“…Gilbert Baker who could barely finish any project he ever started was the 1978 co-chair of the Gay Day Decorating Committee would later … claim he created the rainbow flags all by himself, at Harvey’s [Milk] request nonetheless—but the artists knew he was no Betsy Ross!
“Lynn Segerblon who was the other co-chair with Gilbert Baker of the Gay Day Decorating Committee, along with Hula Palace artist Robert Guttmann, presented their original idea to the Pride Board of the rainbow flag concept.
“The Pride Foundation requested and found funding through the Hotel Tax. Lynn was the rainbow artist for Capezio downtown and professionally known as Faery Rainbow Argyle. It was Ms. Faery who, working with others, chose the colors and mixed the dye for one thousand yards of bleached muslin and designed the Rainbow and Rainbow American Flag, with a sole star placed within the stripes symbolizing “The State of Consciousness.”
“More than one hundred artists worked on this amazing project.”
The flag consisted of eight stripes: hot pink: sexuality; red: life; orange; healing; yellow: sunlight; green: nature; turquoise; magic/art; indigo: serenity/harmony; and violet: spirit. After the assassination of Harvey Milk, there was an increased demand for the flags. To meet that demand, the Paramount Flag Company began selling a version of the flag using stock rainbow fabric consisting of seven stripes of red, orange, yellow, green, turquoise, blue, and violet.
In 1979 the flag was modified again. When hung vertically from the lamp posts of San Francisco's Market Street, the center stripe was obscured by the post itself. Changing the flag design to one with an even number of stripes was the easiest way to rectify this, so the turquoise stripe was dropped, which resulted in a six stripe version of the flag - red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. Naturally, in the modifications, the two color elements that were lost: sex and magic/art. In the early years of the AIDS epidemic, AIDS activists designed a "Victory Over AIDS" flag consisting of the standard six-stripe rainbow flag with a black stripe across the bottom. Leonard Matlovich, himself dying of AIDS-related illness, suggested that upon a cure for AIDS being discovered, the black stripes be removed from the flags and burned.
There is also an on-going controversey around the addition or changing of colors in the flag so individial communities within the LGBTQI communty can be represented. This misses the spirit of the flag. The stripes do not represent specific communities but ideals held by the community: Red represents life; orange is for healing; yellow is for sunlight; green is for nature; blue is for harmony; and purple is for spirit. The original flag had eight stripes, however there have been many iterations since. Today, the most commonly used flag, created in 1979, has six stripes.
Still, there are other versions of the rainbow flag used to represent various queer subsets. At the 2018 Met Gala, for example, Lena Waithe wore a pride flag with black and brown stripes that were used to represent marginalized LGBTQIA+ people of color. It was introduced by the city of Philadelphia in 2017. In addition to the rainbow flag, there is also a transgender flag, a bisexual flag, and a gender fluid flag, to name a few.
The rainbow flag remains a potent symbol of and for the LGBTQI Community. Daily GayWisdom pays tribute to the rainbow with the colors of every entry in GayWisdom.
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Gay Wisdom for Daily Living from White Crane Institute
"With the increasing commodification of gay news, views, and culture by powerful corporate interests, having a strong independent voice in our community is all the more important. White Crane is one of the last brave standouts in this bland new world... a triumph over the looming mediocrity of the mainstream Gay world." - Mark Thompson
Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989!
www.whitecraneinstitute.org
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INTI RAYMI in Cusco, Peru; The Inti Raymi ("Festival of the Sun") was a religious ceremony of the Inca Empire in honor of the god Inti. It also marked the winter solstice and a new year in the Andes of the Southern Hemisphere. Since 1944, a theatrical representation of the Inti Raymi has been taking place at Sacsayhuaman (two km. from Cusco) on June 24 of each year, attracting thousands of tourists and local visitors.
During the Inca Empire, the Inti Raymi was the most important of four ceremonies celebrated in Cusco, as related by Inca Garcilaso de la Vega. The ceremony was also said to indicate the mythical origin of the Incas, lasting nine days of colorful dances and processions, as well as animal sacrifices to ensure a good cropping season. The last Inti Raymi with the Inca Emperor's presence was carried out in 1538, after which the Spanish conquest and the Catholic church suppressed it.
Some natives participated in similar ceremonies in the years after, but it was completely prohibited in 1572 by the Viceroy Francisco de Toledo, who claimed it was a pagan ceremony opposed to the Catholic faith. In 1944, a historical reconstruction of the Inti Raymi was directed by Faustino Espinoza Navarro and indigenous actors. The first reconstruction was largely based on the chronicles of Garcilaso de la Vega and only referred to the religious ceremony.
This writer was in Cusco for the celebration in 2000. Check out these images of this colorful celebration in a city whose flag is the rainbow.
Midsummer Day in England refers to specific European celebrations that accompany the actual solstice, or that take place June 24 and the preceding evening, related to the birthday of St. John the Baptist European midsummer-related holidays, traditions and celebrations, many of which are pre-Christian in origin and have been Christianized as celebrating the Nativity of St. John the Baptist as "Saint John's Day" festivals, are particularly important in Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Estonia, but also found in Ireland, parts of Britain (Cornwall especially), France, Italy Malta, Portugal, Spain and in other parts of Europe and elsewhere, such as Canada, the United States, and even in the Southern Hemisphere (Brazil) where this European celebration would be more appropriately called Midwinter..
Midsummer is also sometimes referred to by neo-pagans and some others as Litha, stemming from Bede's De temporarum ratione in which he gave the Anglo-Saxon names for the months roughly corresponding to June and July as "se Ærra Liþa" and "se Æfterra Liþa" (the "early Litha month" and the "later Litha month") with an intercalary month of "Liþa" appearing after se Æfterra Liþa on leap years. Solstitial celebrations still center on June 24th, which is no longer the longest day of the year.
The difference between the Julian calendar year (365.2500 days) and the tropical year (365.2422 days) moved the day associated with the actual astronomical solstice forward approximately three days every four centuries, until Pope Gregory XIII changed the calendar bringing the solstice to around June 21st. In the Gregorian calendar, the solstice moves around a bit, but in the long term it moves only about one day in 3000 years.
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Gay Wisdom for Daily Living from White Crane Institute
"With the increasing commodification of gay news, views, and culture by powerful corporate interests, having a strong independent voice in our community is all the more important. White Crane is one of the last brave standouts in this bland new world... a triumph over the looming mediocrity of the mainstream Gay world." - Mark Thompson
Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989!
www.whitecraneinstitute.org
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"I don't know why somebody else's marriage has anything to do with me. I'm completely comfortable with Gay marriage. If he's pleasant to me on the street, if his children don't throw things in my yard, then I'm happy. It seems to me we're making issues of things that honestly don't matter." – The late ELIZABETH EDWARDS, ex-wife of Democratic presidential candidate (and narcissistic cad) John Edwards, speaking to reporters after her keynote speech to San Francisco's Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club. Her philandering husband responded by saying that he loves the way his wife always speaks her mind, but that he continued to only support civil unions for Gay couples all while having a child with another woman outside of his marriage and while his wife was fighting the cancer that would eventually take her life. Yeah...bye Felicia. Elizabeth Edwards deserved so much better.
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Gay Wisdom for Daily Living from White Crane Institute
"With the increasing commodification of gay news, views, and culture by powerful corporate interests, having a strong independent voice in our community is all the more important. White Crane is one of the last brave standouts in this bland new world... a triumph over the looming mediocrity of the mainstream Gay world." - Mark Thompson
Exploring Gay Wisdom & Culture since 1989!
www.whitecraneinstitute.org
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