Pride Month
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148 free Pride Month trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
65 free Pride Month trivia questions with answers. These 65 LGBTQ+ trivia questions cover the history and culture behind Pride Month: the Stonewall uprising and the first marches, the meaning of the flags, landmark court cases and laws around the world, and the activists from Marsha P. Johnson to Harvey Milk who changed things. Some are fun Pride trivia questions almost anyone can answer; others are for people who know their Gilbert Baker from their Brenda Howard. The last section is LGBT pop culture trivia: RuPaul's Drag Race and its Emmy haul, Ellen's Puppy Episode, Moonlight and Brokeback Mountain at the Oscars, Billy Porter in Pose, Schitt's Creek's Emmy sweep, Lil Nas X's 19 weeks at number one, Kim Petras and Laverne Cox making history, the BBC banning 'Relax', Paris Is Burning, Heartstopper and the Rocky Horror midnight tradition. Use it for a Pride event, an office or classroom round or a queer pub quiz. Every answer has been checked against a primary source or reference encyclopaedia, and each question shows its explanation and citation once you have answered.
30 of 148 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In 2012, which search engine began decorating LGBTQ-related searches with rainbow patterns each June?
Google began showing rainbow-coloured bars on LGBTQ-related searches each June in 2012, and in 2017 it also painted rainbow routes onto Google Maps along Pride parade paths.
Q 02What slang term named the weekly cash envelopes the Stonewall Inn's Mafia owners handed police?
Gayola
Gayola was the slang for such police payoffs; the Stonewall Inn, run by the Mafia without a liquor licence, handed the Sixth Precinct cash envelopes weekly to stay open.
Q 03In 1969 the Stonewall Inn was owned by which New York crime family?
Genovese
The Genovese family's 'Fat Tony' Lauria and his partners put up $3,500 in 1966 to turn the former restaurant into a gay bar run without a liquor licence.
Q 04The first New York Pride event, held on 28 June 1970, was promoted under what name?
Christopher Street Liberation Day
Christopher Street Liberation Day, named for the Stonewall Inn's street, was the banner of the 28 June 1970 march; its permit arrived only two hours before the start.
Q 05The first New York Pride march in 1970 ran 51 blocks from Sheridan Square to where?
Central Park
The marchers reached Central Park's Sheep Meadow for a 'gay-in'; The New York Times reported on its front page that the procession stretched about fifteen blocks.
Q 06Bisexual activist Brenda Howard, a planner of New York's 1970 march, is remembered by what nickname?
Mother of Pride
Mother of Pride is the name Brenda Howard earned on the 1970 march committee; she is also credited, with two fellow activists, with popularising the word 'Pride' for the celebrations.
Q 07Which U.S. president first proclaimed June as 'Gay & Lesbian Pride Month'?
Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton issued the first presidential proclamation of Gay and Lesbian Pride Month in June 1999 and repeated it in 2000; Barack Obama revived the practice in 2009 as LGBT Pride Month.
Q 08Besides New York, which city held a Pride march in June 1970, a year after Stonewall?
Los Angeles
Los Angeles marched down Hollywood Boulevard on 28 June 1970, the same day as New York, after the ACLU helped organisers overturn police permit conditions meant to price the parade out.
Q 09The first two hand-dyed rainbow flags were raised on 25 June 1978 at which event?
The Gay Freedom Day Parade
The Gay Freedom Day Parade flew both flags over United Nations Plaza; a remnant of one, believed lost for four decades, turned up among Baker's belongings in 2020.
Q 10How many colored stripes were in Gilbert Baker's original 1978 design of the rainbow flag?
Eight
Gilbert Baker's original rainbow flag, debuted in 1978, featured eight colored stripes, each with a specific meaning.
Q 11What does the red stripe in the standard six-color rainbow flag typically symbolize?
Life
In Gilbert Baker's scheme the red stripe stands for life; the six-colour flag is usually flown with red on top, the order the colours appear in a natural rainbow.
Q 12Philadelphia's 2017 'More Color More Pride' flag added which two stripes to the rainbow?
Black and brown
Black and brown stripes were added to recognise LGBTQ people of colour after complaints of racism in the city's gay bars; Daniel Quasar's Progress flag carried them on a year later.
Q 13Which stripe of Gilbert Baker's original rainbow flag was dropped because that fabric colour was hard to get?
Hot Pink
Q 21What slogan was the planners' first thought for New York's 1970 march before 'pride' won out?
Gay Power
Gay Power was the committee's first thought, but member Craig Schoonmaker argued that few people had power while anyone could have pride, and his word stuck.
Q 22The Stonewall Inn, site of the June 1969 uprising, stands in which Manhattan neighbourhood?
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village had a sizeable gay and lesbian population from after the First World War, and Prohibition-era speakeasies had quietly helped its gay bars flourish.
Q 23Which Greek letter was used as an early emblem by some LGBTQ+ rights movements?
Lambda (λ)
Hot pink was dropped when Harvey Milk's assassination in November 1978 sent demand soaring and the fabric proved unavailable, so the Paramount Flag Company sold a seven-stripe version instead.
Q 14In Daniel Quasar's 2018 Progress Pride Flag, what do the light blue, pink and white stripes represent?
Transgender individuals
Transgender individuals, and non-binary people, are represented by the stripes borrowed from the Transgender Pride Flag; Quasar's 2018 redesign also took elements from the Philadelphia flag.
Q 15Rainbow-flag creator Gilbert Baker went by which drag name, alluding to the first US flag's seamstress?
Busty Ross
Baker's drag name Busty Ross punned on Betsy Ross, the legendary seamstress of the first US flag; he refused to trademark the rainbow flag, saying it belonged to everyone.
Q 16Before entering politics, what type of business did Harvey Milk open in the Castro District?
A camera store
A camera store, Castro Camera, became his campaign headquarters; a 1973 shouting match there with a state official over a $100 tax deposit helped push him toward running for office.
Q 17Which Nazi camp badge for gay men was reclaimed in the 1970s as a symbol of gay pride?
Pink triangle
The pink triangle marked thousands of men sent to the camps for homosexuality; in 1986 New York activists turned it point-up for the 'Silence = Death' poster that ACT UP adopted.
Q 18Which president was the first Republican to publicly recognize LGBTQ Pride Month?
Donald Trump
Donald Trump recognised Pride Month in a May 2019 tweet, the first Republican president to do so; the White House later issued it as a statement, and Joe Biden returned to formal proclamations in 2021.
Q 19Many US colleges celebrate Pride in April rather than June under what nickname?
Gaypril
Gaypril lets colleges hold Pride events while students are still on campus, since most academic terms end before June.
Q 20The 'Annual Reminders', early LGBTQ+ demonstrations held each July 4 from 1965 to 1969, took place in which city?
Philadelphia
Philadelphia's Independence Hall was the backdrop each July 4; after Stonewall the organisers dropped the picket for an annual June march in New York, which became the first Pride.
Designer Tom Doerr picked lambda for the Gay Activists Alliance in 1970, citing its physics sense of an exchange of energy; a 1974 congress in Edinburgh adopted it as the international gay-rights symbol.
Q 24The Gay Activists Alliance's New York headquarters, occupied in 1971 and burned by arsonists in 1974, was a former what?
Firehouse
The GAA Firehouse, a former fire station at 99 Wooster Street in SoHo, hosted hugely popular Saturday dances that funded the group's 'zaps' of politicians.
Q 25What does the orange stripe in the common six-color rainbow flag represent?
Healing
Orange stands for healing in Gilbert Baker's scheme; he and dozens of volunteers dyed and stitched the first two flags by hand in a gay community centre on Grove Street.
Q 26Which journalist wrote the 1982 biography 'The Mayor of Castro Street', about Harvey Milk?
Randy Shilts
Randy Shilts, a San Francisco Chronicle reporter, published The Mayor of Castro Street in 1982 and went on to write And the Band Played On (1987) about the AIDS epidemic.
Q 27London's first Pride march, in July 1972, ran from Trafalgar Square to which park?
Hyde Park
Hyde Park was the finish for a few hundred marchers; the date was picked as the Saturday nearest the anniversary of the Stonewall riots.
Q 28What does the yellow stripe in the common six-color rainbow flag symbolize?
Sunlight
Yellow stands for sunlight in Gilbert Baker's 1978 scheme; Harvey Milk and other activists had pressed him to give the movement a symbol of its own.
Q 29Marsha P. Johnson co-founded STAR in 1970, to shelter homeless queer youth, with which fellow activist?
Sylvia Rivera
Sylvia Rivera and Johnson formed Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries after a 1970 sit-in at New York University, and their STAR House in the East Village took in homeless young people.
Q 30In the six-color rainbow flag, green stands for what?
Nature
Green stands for nature in Gilbert Baker's scheme; tie-dye artist Lynn Segerblom, then known as Faerie Argyle Rainbow, helped dye the giant first flags.