San Francisco is My Home

25
Sep

Loud, proud and cow’d

Author: kris, Category: Groups, News

Okay, let’s get to the bottom of this, no pun intended. What is this leather pride flag all about?

Above, you see an image of the flag, courtesy of Wikipedia. The creator of the flag, Tony DeBlase, has been quoted as saying “I will leave it to the viewer to interpret the colors and symbols.” However, some leather-proud folks like to refer to it as “Black and Blue with Love,” perhaps because it is sometimes associated with BDSM.

That interpretation takes care of the black and blue stripes and the heart, but what does the central white stripe stand for? Maybe that stripe was left blank to symbolize the blank expression we uninformed folk make when presented with the flag. Maybe it is white to symbolize the purity of this community’s devotion to just one kind of material: they are not naugahyde-proud, nor vinyl-proud, nor spandex-proud. Or maybe DeBlase just couldn’t think what other color to add. We may never know.