Did you know that the rainbow flag has only existed as a symbol of the LGBTQ community since 1978? That’s when San Francisco politician and iconic gay rights activist Harvey Milk commissioned Gilbert Baker, a drag queen and US military veteran, to create a new flag to represent the LGBTQ community.

The previous flag featured a pink triangle that Nazis used as badges to mark gay people—powerful but dark. Baker designed the rainbow initially with eight colors, later narrowed down to six for practicality. The History Channel provides a helpful explanation for the symbolism:

“The different colors within the flag were meant to represent togetherness, since LGBT people come in all races, ages and genders, and rainbows are both natural and beautiful. The original flag featured eight colors, each having a different meaning. At the top was hot pink, which represented sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow signifying sunlight, green for nature, turquoise to represent art, indigo for harmony, and finally violet at the bottom for spirit.”

In 2015, after the US Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, self-described “queer trans feminist nerd” Noah Slater requested the Unicode Consortium—the organization that approves new emojis—add a rainbow flag that “unambiguously symbolizes queer pride.” Unicode took action in Emoji 4.0 in 2016, making available a rainbow flag emoji as a sequence of the white flag emoji 🏳️ and rainbow emoji 🌈, yielding 🏳️‍🌈.

Also called the pride flag emoji, the rainbow flag emoji shows a waving rainbow flag on most platforms, though Microsoft and JoyPixels show it on a pole.

Emojipedia

Unicode updates in 2016 also introduced various same-sex couple emoji, such as two women holding hands 👭, further expanding the emoji palette for the LGBTQ community.

don’t be afraid to be yourself 🏳️‍🌈 pic.twitter.com/BQkKkOiR08

— ❁ (@gardenactive) June 8, 2018