At a June 1 rainbow flag raising ceremony at city hall, Morgan Hill officials said they will continue to celebrate Pride Month and the LGBTQ+ community until they are fully embraced.
“Sometimes people ask me, do we still need to raise the (Pride) flag?” City Council member Rene Spring said before a crowd of about 50 people at the ceremony. “And I say, yes we do. My blood is still not good enough to be donated. My husband, Mark—when we met, we couldn’t even get married… We still cannot travel to some places we want to because it’s not safe for couples like us.”
Spring was elected as Morgan Hill’s first openly gay council member in 2016. Since then, he has become an active advocate for more services for the LGBTQ+ community in South County.
The City of Morgan Hill has flown the Pride flag over city hall during the month of June since 2017. But other nearby communities—including Gilroy, Hollister and San Juan Bautista—just started raising the rainbow flag this year.
Mayor Rich Constantine said at the Morgan Hill ceremony that when the city raised the rainbow flag for the first time in 2017, about “five or six people were here.” He said the increasing number of Pride Month celebrants and supporters is encouraging, but he is confident that one day the flag raising will not require a ceremonial event.
“This country and the world are waking up to be more inclusive,” Constantine said. “This flag represents all of us. We all need to be included.”
At the City of Gilroy’s rainbow flag ceremony, also on June 1, Chef Carlos Pineda, a Gilroy native involved with numerous local organizations, said that in a recent survey, 40 percent of LGBTQ+ youth in California seriously considered suicide over the past 12 months. Thirty percent said they have been physically threatened or harmed during their lifetime, while 40 percent of transgender or non-binary youth reported being assaulted due to their gender identity.
“I too have been a victim of emotional, verbal and physical assault for being me on the same streets you all walk on, attending the same functions you attend and going to the same grocery stores you shop at,” he said.
Celebrated annually in June, Pride Month acknowledges the 1969 Stonewall Riots in Manhattan, a tipping point for the Gay Liberation Movement in the United States.
The flag flying over Morgan Hill City Hall is an updated version known as the “Progress Pride” flag. The design includes a five-colored chevron over a portion of the classic rainbow flag to “emphasize inclusion and progression,” according to city staff. The colors in the arrow-shaped lines represent LGBTQ+ communities of color, and include the colors of the Transgender Pride flag.
The flag will fly throughout June at city hall as well as the Community and Cultural Center and the Centennial Recreation Center.
Other local government officials at the ceremony promised to continue to fight for more inclusion for the LGBTQ+ community.
Daniel Moretti, of the Santa Clara County Office of LGBTQ+ Affairs, said at the Morgan Hill ceremony that the county “has more work to do to provide more services” to the LGBTQ+ community. “That’s going to be a focus of ours in South County,” Moretti said.
Erik Chalhoub contributed reporting.
