Posted on 06/07/2002 4:32:44 AM PDT by H8DEMS
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 flag is for free public usage.
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.
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 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
That is the most absurd thing I have ever read. If I were you, I would study up on Morality 101 before you give advice again.
The poster was correct. They are just plain deviant. "Bi-sexual" is as useless as a term as "Gay."
And your supreme authority over the English language comes whence?
Attraction is a vague concept, and without any hope of objective proof. Your definition leaves 'homo-, hetero- and bi-sexuality ' solely to be defined by the individual him/herself. That's inherently solipsistic. I would submit that both usage and logic favor behaviorally-determined categorization. It makes no sense to categorize, say, a woman who has had sex only with men but has occasionally found another woman attractive as bisexual.
Accepted by whom? My dictionary (American Heritage, 1976) gives two definitions for homosexual, one defined by attaction, the other defined by behavior. I would submit there is no single 'accepted definition', and in trying to impose one you are trying to limit the parameters of the discussion.
What's this about "categorization"? Do people need to have their sexual orientation cleanly defined before they can go about their lives? A woman who is attracted to both men and women is bisexual even if she never has a sexual encounter with another woman. It implies nothing else about her life.
No. Clearly not. We divide things into categories because they're useful tools for generalization. A categorization is better or worse purely on how useful it is. If we want to say 'bisexual men are more likely to get AIDS than heterosexual men', the behavioral categorization of bisexuality is obviously more useful. 'Bisexual men' in this case is a shorthand for the list of all men who have had sex with persons of both sexes. There may be circumstances in which it might be more useful to categorize bisexual men by attraction than behavior, although I suspect in general it is less useful. But insisting that one or the other definitions is 'correct' is attempting to win an argument by begging the question.
Oh, puullleeeaaasseee.....yeah, teach that to your kids.
For example, the pro-gay side defines homosexuality as an attraction to adult men, and pedophilia as an attraction to children, and therefore by definition homosexual is not pedophile. And the anti-gay side defines homosexual as anyone who has sex with any male human, and so finds a lot of pedophile homosexuals. And no one asks the most relevant question for public policy - i.e., if you take the set of all men who actively, and exclusively or predominantly, have sex with other men, are members of that set more or less likely than heterosexual men (equivalently defined) to have sex with children, within some given period?
If we weren't playing word games we could abbreviate that as 'are homosexuals more or less inclined than heterosexuals toward pedophilia?' I don't care. I'll figure out the question I want to ask, and ask it. But I'll also object if someone tries to finesse the debate by definitional sleight-of-hand.
Good Lord! What's next? Homos on pink tootsies and pink slippers parading their little pink flag.
To alert you specifically, so you don't get caught up in the wrong group during the next FReeper rally.
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