European Union Gay Flag

Overview

The blue field and twelve-star circle of the flag of Europe are kept, and the gold of the stars is replaced by the rainbow: two stars to each colour, running clockwise from red at the top through orange, yellow, green and blue to violet. The centre of the field is left plain. Greg Gomes published it on the national page of his collection and marked it as his own design; the file held here matches the byte count his page lists. ^[1] No physical use has been documented.

Identity & Context

Represented Identity

LGBTQ

National Context

European Union

Creators

The Creator

Attribution notes

This flag is one of the designs on the national page, and it carries the symbol Gomes placed before a flag name to mark a design as his own rather than one he catalogued. ^[1] His publication, that marking convention and his reuse terms are set out in the creator record below.

Origin

Digital Origin

Gay Journey (gayjourney.com)

Origin Type

creation place unknown; published online

Physical Origin Status

Not documented.

Represents the European Union. The design was not made there: it was published through a McKinney, Texas post-office address and the place it was drawn is not documented. ^[1]

Colonial / settler context

The European Union is a supranational political institution rather than a country, and it occupies no single territory with a single land history; a land acknowledgement of the kind that fits a Canadian province does not apply to it. What can be said about the emblem itself is documented: the circle of twelve gold stars was adopted by the Council of Europe, a separate human rights organisation, in December 1955, and taken up by the European institutions three decades later, and the Union states that the stars stand for the ideals of unity, solidarity and harmony among the peoples of Europe and that their number is unrelated to the number of member states. ^[3] The colonial histories attached to this flag are those of its member states, which differ from one another and are not the Union's own; they belong on the entries for those countries rather than here. No source connects Gomes to any European Union institution, and none records the design being adopted, displayed or acknowledged by one.

The flag represents the European Union. Where it was made is not documented. The design was published through Gay Journey (gayjourney.com), run from American Dimensions, PO Box 573, McKinney, Texas, which is a mailing address for the publisher and not evidence of where Gomes lived or worked. No source located places Gomes in the European Union or identifies him as a resident or community member there. ^[1]

Dates & Chronology

Year Created

2002

Published online

Published online by 2002; the collection ran to 2011. No physical use documented.

Creation Bounds

Four different things are recorded here and they are not the same date. The copyright range on Gay Journey begins in 2002, and the site's flag section is in the Internet Archive from 28 October 2002, which bounds the collection rather than this design. ^[1] Collection-level publication is documented from outside the sites twice: Francisco Santos described GayJourney.COM on Flags of the World on 14 May 2003 as carrying "lots of rainbows: from Argentina to Wales, EU, UNO, US states, Canadian provinces and general gay flags," and Richard Knipel wrote again on 14 June 2004. Neither report lists or dates an individual flag. ^[2] Direct documentation of this individual design has not been dated. No source dates the design itself, and no flag in the collection carries a date of its own. The year given is the earliest year the collection is documented in publication.

Lineage

Direct predecessors

Rainbow Pride Flag

Sibling flags

Alberta Gay Flag, Straight Ally Pride Flag, Anarcha-Queer Flag (rainbow variant), Argentina Gay Flag, Australia Gay Flag, Brazil Gay Flag

+ 44 more

British Columbia Gay Flag, Canadian Pride Flag, Chicago Pride Flag (Rainbow Stripes, Purple Stars), Chile Gay Flag, Dominican Republic Gay Flag, Egypt Gay Flag, France Gay Flag, Gay Pride Flag of Pakistan, Heteroflexible Pride Flag, Heterosexual / Straight Pride Flag, Homoflexible Pride Flag, India Gay Flag, Italy Gay Flag, Japan Gay Flag, Jewish Gay Pride Flag, Manitoba Gay Flag, Mexico Gay Flag, Netherlands Gay Flag, New Brunswick Gay Flag, Newfoundland Gay Flag, Northwest Territories Gay Flag, Nova Scotia Gay Flag, Nunavut Gay Flag, Ontario Gay Flag, Palestinian Gay Pride Flag, Panama Gay Flag, Philadelphia Pride Flag, Prince Edward Island Gay Flag, Quebec Gay Flag, Rainbow Flag with White Triangle (Sapporo), Rainbow Israel Flag, Rainbow Polish Flag (2014, Angela Getler), Russia Gay Flag, Saskatchewan Gay Flag, Social Justice Pride Flag, South African Gay Pride Flag, Switzerland Gay Flag, Tanzania Gay Flag, Texas Rainbow Flag, Turkish Gay Pride Flag, Two-Spirit Pride Flag (2005, Zoccole), Two-Spirit Pride Flag (2016 Tumblr documentation), Victory Over AIDS Flag (1980s, designer unknown), Yukon Territory Gay Flag

Lineage confidence

high

Two visual sources, one of which the lineage graph can hold and one of which it cannot. The six-stripe Rainbow Pride Flag is a direct Pride-flag parent and is registered as one. The Flag of Europe is the second visual source, and it is recorded as a structured source-flag relationship in Design rather than as a graph node, because the graph accepts only Encycloflaggia entries and no Pride entry should be invented to create one. The relationship here is: direct visual source. Flags of the World describes the method this whole class of flag follows as "taking an existing flag and 'merging' it with the Rainbow Flag or various GLBT symbols to represent GLBT members of the group the existing flag represents." ^[2] The other Gomes flags are siblings by collection rather than by descent: one designer, one operation, four series published together under one set of terms. A shared designer is a collection relationship and not a substitute for parentage.

Lineage tree

Every record reachable from this one through documented parent and child relationships: 4 records across 4 generations.

Ancestors -3

Original Rainbow Flag (1978)

Ancestors -2

Seven-Stripe Rainbow Flag (1978)

Ancestor

Rainbow Pride Flag

This record

European Union Gay Flag

Colors & Symbolism

No published statement of meaning has been located.

The page gives the flags names and nothing more. ^[1]

Placement: one pair of stars to each of the six values, running clockwise from the twelve o'clock position. The field is not part of the sequence and samples as a dark blue. These are working values sampled from the surviving artwork at the centre of each band, not published specifications; the collection-level note on the recurring Gomes rainbow values is carried in the creator record rather than repeated on each flag.

Design

Aspect Ratio

2:3 · apparent

Ratio Notes

Measured from the recovered artwork, 538 by 358 pixels and 4,788 bytes, the size the page lists. Published as apparent: measured from a served thumbnail, not from a specification. The flag of Europe itself is specified at 2:3.

Orientation

horizontal

Center Symbol

ring of twelve rainbow-coloured five-pointed stars

Not described in any located source. The recovered artwork is 538 by 358 pixels. The page lists the file at 4,788 bytes, which the recovered copy matches exactly, identifying it as the file the page served. A description drawn from the artwork itself has not yet been written. ^[1] Observed in the artwork: The stars are rainbow-coloured rather than gold, two to each colour, in the order red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet running clockwise from the top. The field samples as a dark blue that does not match the European Union flag's specified blue. It is not documented whether the shift is deliberate or an artefact of the indexed-colour rendering. The image limits what can be established: Exact tinctures cannot be compared with the European Union flag's specification from a small indexed-palette GIF, and at 538 by 358 pixels the star and ring geometry cannot be measured closely enough to say whether it follows the specified proportions. A thin grey frame line borders the image and belongs to the file rather than to the design. The design is described from the recovered artwork, not from any source that describes it.

No proportion, construction sheet or specification has been located. ^[1]

A dark blue field carries a ring of twelve five-pointed stars, each set point-up and spaced at intervals of about thirty degrees. The stars are coloured in six pairs, running clockwise from a red star at the twelve o'clock position through a second red, two orange, two yellow, two green, two blue and two violet. All twelve sit at roughly equal distance from the centre of the ring, and the centre of the field is left plain. The blue field and the twelve-star circle of the European Union flag are retained; the gold of the stars is replaced by the rainbow sequence.

Source flag and visual comparison

Source flag

Flag of Europe

Jurisdiction

the European Union

Relationship

direct visual source

Elements retained

the dark blue field, the circle of twelve five-pointed stars, their point-up orientation and their equal spacing

Elements altered

the gold of the stars, replaced by the six rainbow colours in pairs

The flag of Europe is a circle of twelve gold stars on blue. The European Union states that the stars stand for "the ideals of unity, solidarity and harmony among the peoples of Europe" and that their number has nothing to do with the number of member countries; the design was adopted by the Council of Europe in December 1955 and by the European institutions three decades later. ^[3] Gomes changed one property of it, the colour of the stars.

Usage & Adoption

Current Status

unknown

No physical use has been documented. ^[1]

Image Archive

Source Flag and Visual Comparison

Footnotes & Citations

Image Sources

Rendering

original artwork recovered

• European Union gay flag as published by Greg Gomes on the Gay Journey national page. · Credit: Design by Greg Gomes, Gay Journey · Gay Journey, National Gay Flags Of The WorldRights Gay Journey identified the marked designs as Gomes's property and asked that reuse be credited to him and linked back to gay_flags.htm. The credit and the link here are placed to those terms as published; the present rights and contact status have not been independently verified. ^[1]
• Flag of Europe (the European Union), the source flag for this design. The flag of Europe is a circle of twelve gold stars on blue. The European Union states that the stars stand for "the ideals of unity, solidarity and harmony among the peoples of Europe" and that their number has nothing to do with the number of member countries; the design was adopted by the Council of Europe in December 1955 and by the European institutions three decades later. ^[3] Gomes changed one property of it, the colour of the stars. Relationship: direct visual source. Retained: the dark blue field, the circle of twelve five-pointed stars, their point-up orientation and their equal spacing. Altered: the gold of the stars, replaced by the six rainbow colours in pairs. · Credit: Wikimedia Commons contributors, to the published graphical specification · Wikimedia CommonsRights Public domain. Wikimedia Commons marks this file with an insignia restriction: it depicts a flag, coat of arms, seal or other official insignia whose use is restricted in many countries independently of copyright. Reproduced here as a comparison for the Gomes design, not as a representation of any government.