Gay leather pride flag

Tony DeBlase developed it, and the homosexual leather scene rapidly accepted it.

Schmöger, 24 Aug 2001,
quoting from this page

There is an article in International Leatherman magazine (Issue 25, published July-August 1999) about the history of the Leather Pride flag. This last symbol was reclaimed from use as badges of shame in Nazi concentration camps, and through reappropriation have made these symbols for gay rights.

The Greek letter lambda was selected as a symbol by the Gay Activists Alliance of New York in 1970.

In time, however, its use seems to have become less strict in terms of the age and relation role, so nowadays it is sometimes used almost as a synonym for a leatherman, depending on the user's point of view.

The flag was first presented at Mid-Atlantic Leather 1998, a gathering of leather people. They offer these flags for sale to various flag importers in the U.S.

and elsewhere. Since then, it’s been connected with leather in general, as well as allied communities like the BDSM community.

On May 28th, 1989, he debuted the design at International Mister Leather. Finally, blue color was replaced with green to represent the boys/bois as newbies ("greenhorns"). However, women were arrested and imprisoned for “antisocial behavior,” which included feminism, lesbianism, and prostitution, and was applied to women who did not conform to the ideal Nazi image of a woman.

The lambda signifies unity under oppression.

The pink triangle was used exclusively with male prisoners—lesbians were not included under Paragraph 175, a statute which made homosexual acts between males a crime. Nevertheless, the design caught on so fast that before anyone could do anything, the prototype design was seen everywhere: in magazines, in parades, on flags, on T-shirts, in logos, etc.

Schmöger, 22 August 2001

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Alternate origin report?…

If I am correct, there is a very funny story about that flag. DeBlase, a columnist for Drummer Magazine, invented the flag entirely on his own, and left the symbolism purposefully vague, encouraging the community to assign their own.

The size of heart might vary according to presented images, but the only photos of the flag currently available [5, 6] show a smallish heart, overlapping two stripes only (shown in the attached image).

The whole design obviously reflects the original use of word "boy/boi", even though its present-day use as the basis for logos of some leathermen clubs, which also use phrase "boys of leather" in their name, seems to have little in common with that.

Sources:
[1] Los Angeles Boys of Leather website at the Internet Archive
[2] Boy/Boi Pride Flag description
[3] Leather Pride and related flags (including the Boy Pride Flag)
[4] Gallery of Fetish Pride Flags (including the Boy Pride Flag)
[5] Flag photo at the Facebook
[6] Flag photo at the Pups Gear webshop

Tomislav Todorovic, 24 October 2011

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