And he’s keenly aware of how little information is available for men like him. But he’s not just a researcher - he’s a survivor himself, diagnosed last year at age 59. University of MinnesotaĪ professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health, Rosser has received a $3 million grant from the National Cancer Institute to put together the first comprehensive rehabilitation program specifically for gay and bisexual men with prostate cancer. Simon Rosser, PhD, MPH, is a professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. “The medical community say, ‘We don’t want to ask older heterosexual men questions that might upset them,’" Simon Rosser, an LGBTQ health specialist and co-author of " Gay and Bisexual Men Living With Prostate Cancer," told NBC News. It’s impossible to know how many gay men have been diagnosed prostate cancer, because questions about sexuality are rarely included in research studies. “To go into a urologist office, you walk in with all this shame and inhibition,” Brass lamented. That discomfort can spread to gay patients. They can’t even breathe the words ‘anal sex.’ Talking to a man about it is just impossible.” "If you bring another man, they don’t know what to do. “If you’re gay and you go to a urologist who hasn’t dealt with gay men, they’ll tell you, ‘Bring your wife with you,’" he said. As Pride points out, a plethora of other flags were designed to represent different groups within the LGBTQIA+ community.That’s true in the doctor’s office, too, Brass added. Today, there are even more pride flags out there. Here are the meanings behind the colors in the current pride flag: The blue that replaced the indigo now symbolizes harmony. Baker dropped yet another stripe, which resulted in the six-stripe version of the flag we use most often today-red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. According to Baker's estate, that was because when it was hung vertically from the lamp posts of San Francisco's Market Street, the center stripe (turquoise) was obscured by the similarly-colored lamp post itself. As excerpted on the website for his estate, Gilbert's memoir, Rainbow Warrior, includes his memory of deciding to make the rainbow flag: The trio encouraged Baker to create a positive emblem for the LGBTQIA+ community.īaker agreed and he looked to his community for inspiration, specifically those dancing at San Francisco's music venue Winterland Ballroom one night. In the late '70s, Baker was living in San Francisco when he met writer Cleve Jones, filmmaker Artie Bressan, and rising activist Harvey Milk. The First Rainbow FlagĮnter: Gilbert Baker, the man who would create the first rainbow pride flag. Still, activists recognized the need for a more empowering symbol. "Gay people wear the pink triangle today as a reminder of the past and a pledge that history will not repeat itself," read one 1977 letter to the editor in Time. In the late 1970s, the pink triangle was somewhat reclaimed by the gay community. Throughout the Holocaust, the Nazis forced those whom they labeled as gay to wear inverted pink triangle badges, just as they forced Jewish people to wear a yellow Star of David. This triangle, however, had a loaded, anti-gay history.
Before the rainbow pride flag was created, there was another symbol for the LGBTQIA+ community: a pink triangle.