Learning About LGBTQIA+

 

We had Pride week at work with lots of rainbow flags around the building but i have only just found out that it isn't any old rainbow, the colours actually stand for something.
The rainbow-colored flags date back at least to the German Peasants’ War in the 1500s and the hippie movement of the 1960s used the flag as a peace symbol and it was this that was created as a symbol for gay rights in the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade in 1978.
The six colors used are red for life and vitality, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, indigo for serenity and harmony and violet for spirit.
I also found out that LGBTQ+ is now LGBTQIA+ which stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer (or questioning), intersex, asexual, and plus which can be a minefield as i also found out as Queer is someone who is not exclusively heterosexual and Intersex is a person with one or more innate sex characteristics that fall outside of traditional conceptions of male or female bodies. Not to be confused with transgender.
Asexual is a person who does not experience sexual attraction and have little or no desire to form romantic relationships and the plus is used to signify all of the gender identities and sexual orientations that letters cannot yet fully describe.
Embarrassingly in 2024, there are 64 countries that have laws that criminalise homosexuality and almost half of these are in Africa and shamefully the death penalty is the legally prescribed punishment for same-sex sexual acts in Brunei, Iran, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and in some northern states of Nigeria while in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Qatar, Somalia, and the United Arab Emirates the death penalty could be applied.