Roseville passed up a critical opportunity to support its LGBTQ community
If you grew up in Roseville, you know the area has an inclusivity issue.
The deep-seated homophobia and transphobia strikingly present on virtually every school campus I attended in this area is just one manifestation of the city’s issues with inclusivity. Most of my LGBTQ classmates at Granite Bay High School immediately moved as far away from Placer County as they could upon graduation, feeling that the area didn’t accept them.
Gay marriage has been legal in the U.S. for six years, yet this is the first year Roseville has proclaimed June as Pride Month following a request from a member of the community. Recently, though, the city council voted 4-1 against flying the rainbow Pride flag on city flagpoles.
The city council had asked city staff to draft two policies for their consideration: one which would formalize the city’s existing policy of only flying government flags and the other which would allow the flying of commemorative flags, like the Pride flag.
“This has everything to do with precedent and nothing to do with the Pride flag,” said Mayor Krista Bernasconi. “If somebody wants to fly a commemorative flag on their property, they should do that. But I don’t feel it’s the city’s job to do that.”
In response to the vote, Bernasconi said she and her colleagues on the council have received a number of emails thanking them for setting a strict city flag precedent. According to the mayor, those who supported the council’s vote are not anti-Pride flag, but I find that hard to believe. After all, I don’t know many folks who are passionate about city flag policies, but I do know that some of my neighbors hold homophobic attitudes.
In place of the Pride flag, Roseville has created a rainbow “We Are Roseville” banner and an inclusion and diversity committee to advise the City Council on issues of human rights, inclusion and engagement. The city also has non-discrimination policies and Roseville police are donning rainbow badges, Bernasconi said.
“Has enough been done overall? From the city’s perspective, yes,” Bernasconi said. “I think it’s more than the city has done for any other particular group.”
To Bernasconi, flying the Pride flag veers into political territory. She believes the city should remain neutral and instead focus on “being a city”: delivering services, paying bills and keeping the community safe. Nearby Lincoln apparently feels the same way — two members of their city council voted no on proclaiming June Pride Month, saying this would be a political act.
To me, affirming support for our LGBTQ neighbors isn’t political, it’s just the right thing to do.
“We say that treating residents with respect is not partisan but a basic and humane way to treat everyone in the community,” wrote Gold Country Media’s editorial board.
Perhaps to some Roseville residents it makes no difference whether the Pride rainbow appears on a banner or on a flag — or whether it appears at all. But the Pride flag is symbolic and meaningful to the LGBTQ community.
The original rainbow flag was created in the late ‘70s by gay artist Gilbert Baker at the urging of the late Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in California history. Milk asked Baker to create a symbol of pride for the gay community. The first flag was called the “Gay Pride Flag,” but it has been redesigned in the decades since to include lesbian, bisexual, asexual, pansexual, transgender and queer people.
A more modern design of the flag is known as the “Progress Pride Flag.” In this design, a triangular chevron added to the side of a rainbow flag includes the colors blue, pink and white to honor the trans community as well as Black and brown to honor people of color.
The flag itself is a symbol of resistance. It is also commemorative: honoring lives lost due to HIV/AIDS and LGBTQ lives lost to violence and homophobia, who are disproportionately people of color.
That’s why Roseville cannot simply slap a rainbow on a banner and declare that the city has done enough to show its support for the LGBTQ community. There’s much more that can be done, and flying a Pride flag during the month of June was one of the easiest and most meaningful acts the city could have taken. Instead, Roseville officials flopped.
The city’s rejection of the Pride flag perpetuates homophobic attitudes within the community. That poses a direct threat to LGBTQ teens.
During last year’s summer of racial reckoning following the police murder of George Floyd, students in the Roseville Joint Union High School District started a movement to publicly acknowledge and combat issues of racism, homophobia, Islamophobia and discrimination in the area.
Meanwhile, schools across the country were engaging in the same types of student- and alumni-led reckonings. One social media movement to emerge from this moment was the creation of school-specific Instagram accounts meant to highlight “unheard” narratives from people of color, those with disabilities, members of the LGBTQ community and other minority groups.
The 30 anonymous testimonies from current GBHS students and alumni posted to the Instagram account “unheardatgb” unveil a decades-long pattern of racism, homophobia, bigotry and harassment.
“I’ve had people openly avoid me because I’m not straight,” one anonymous student wrote via the “unheard” account. “Multiple guys have tried to tell me that they could ‘turn me straight,’ even resorting to cornering me, and I’ve never felt safe enough at Granite Bay to go to faculty.”
One anonymous student, who is transgender, wrote about the transphobic harassment they have faced, detailing how administration failed to resolve an ongoing issue with a teacher who repeatedly misgendered them.
“Over just half a year, GB has instilled a deep fear of public restrooms and locker rooms,” the trans student wrote. “I have been laughed at, threatened, called out, stared at, etc. by students and teachers alike.”
Another student, who is gay, wrote about being targeted by a group of boys in their Spanish class.
“They made comments about my sexuality and that was honestly very, very hard for me to deal with,” the student wrote.
After coming out as bisexual, one student says they were called a slur by another classmate who also told them they were “going to burn in hell.”
This was all just at one high school. Homophobia is wrong at any age, but it is especially harmful for out or closeted LGBTQ teens given the link between homophobia and teen suicide. According to The Trevor Project, one out of six students nationwide in grades 9-12 reported having seriously considered suicide in the past year.
It’s not enough that Roseville has acknowledged Pride Month — a step that was already long overdue. The city can and must be a better ally to its LGBTQ residents.
There are still a few days left of June, meaning the city still has an opportunity to affirm that it’s truly proud of its LGBTQ community. If they don’t, the city will fail to show critical support to this group, the youngest of whom are obviously hurting.
A Pride flag won’t magically solve the issues of engrained homophobia in our city. But reversing this decision and putting up the flag would show that Roseville is actually invested in fostering a thriving LGBTQ community — no longer content watching its young, queer high school graduates leave and never return.