Baker, Gilbert, 1951-2017

Gilbert Baker was an artist, drag queen, and Sister of Perpetual Indulgence who played the central role in the 1978 creation of the rainbow LGBTQ pride flag. Born in Kansas in 1951, Baker was drafted into the U.S. Army as a young man. He was stationed in San Francisco as a medic, remained in the city after his honorable discharge in 1972, and became a drag queen as well as an anti-war and pro-cannabis activist. In 1978, Baker and a team of volunteers dyed and sewed the first rainbow flags for San Francisco Gay Freedom Day, as Pride was then known. The original flags had eight colors, each one standing for a different aspect of queer experience: sex, life, healing, the sun, nature, art and magic, serenity, and the spirit. Later versions of the flag would drop the pink and turquoise stripes, leading to the six-color version most commonly seen today. Baker would spend much of the rest of his career exploring flag imagery, sewing Pride flags for parades (some over a mile long) and creating drag costumes that riffed on the American flag, the Statue of Liberty, and the persona of Betsy Ross. In 1981, Baker became a novice with the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a nondenominational order of queer nuns. The Sisters protested homophobia, distributed safe sex educational materials, and functioned as community and spiritual leaders in tongue-in-cheek drag. As Sister Chanel 2001, Baker was often seen with his friend and fellow Sister, Gilbert Block (Sadie, Sadie the Rabbi Lady). He later left the group after a dispute over his unapproved use of the Sister Chanel persona for a commercial greeting card, but he continues to be associated with the Sisters in popular memory. As time passed, Baker increasingly turned his attention to personal protests against homophobic figures, such as his “Pink Jesus” performance piece at the 1990 San Francisco Pride parade (protesting Jesse Helms’ attempts to defund the National Endowment for the Arts) and the reimagined concentration camp uniforms he created to protest the election of Donald Trump. Baker moved from San Francisco to New York in 1994, and died there in 2017.

Gilbert Baker (June 2, 1951 – March 31, 2017) was an American artist, designer, activist, and vexillographer, best known as the creator of the rainbow flag.

Biography
Baker was born on June 2, 1951, in Chanute, Kansas.[1][2] He grew up in Parsons, Kansas, where his grandmother owned a women's clothing store.[3] His father was a judge and his mother was a teacher.[1] He was baptized a Methodist.[4]

Baker served in the United States Army from 1970 to 1972. He was stationed as a medic in San Francisco at the beginning of the gay rights movement[5] and lived there as an openly gay man.[6] After his honorable discharge from the military, he worked on the first marijuana legalization initiative, California Proposition 19 (1972), and was taught to sew by his fellow activist, Mary Dunn.[7] He used his skill to create banners for gay-rights and anti-war protest marches. It was during this time that he met and became friends with Harvey Milk.[8] He also joined the gay drag activist group Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence stating, "At first it was glamorous and political, but when the Sisters became more organized, I became a tool of the right wing and raised money for Jerry Falwell", referring to video and images of the group that were used for right-wing Christian efforts, "so I stopped."[9]

Baker first created the Rainbow Flag with a collective in 1978.[1] He refused to trademark it, seeing it as a symbol that was for the LGBT community.[1] In 1979, Baker began work at Paramount Flag Company in San Francisco, then located on the southwest corner of Polk Street and Post Street in the Polk Gulch neighborhood. Baker designed displays for Dianne Feinstein, the Premier of China, the presidents of France, Venezuela, and the Philippines, the King of Spain, and many others. He also designed creations for numerous civic events and San Francisco Gay Pride. In 1984, he designed flags for the Democratic National Convention.[10]

In 1994, Baker moved to New York City, where he lived for the rest of his life.[1] Here, he continued his creative work and activism. That year he created the world's largest flag (at that time) in celebration of the 25th anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall riots.[10]

In 2003, to commemorate the Rainbow Flag's 25th anniversary, Baker created a Rainbow Flag that stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean in Key West.[10] After the commemoration, he sent sections of this flag to more than 100 cities around the world.[11] Due to his creation of the rainbow flag, Baker often used the drag queen name "Busty Ross", alluding to Betsy Ross.[3]

Baker died at home in his sleep on March 31, 2017, at age 65, in New York City.[12][1][13] The New York City medical examiner's office determined cause of death was hypertensive and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease.[12] Upon Baker's death, California state senator Scott Wiener said Baker "helped define the modern LGBT movement".[14]

Legacy