A committee of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors recommended passage of an ordinance to landmark the late gay artist Gilbert Baker's oversized rainbow flag installation in the Castro neighborhood without allowing variant or alternative flags at the site.
The Land Use and Transportation Committee forwarded the matter with a positive recommendation to the full board after a 3-0 vote July 29. The supervisors will hear the item July 30, the last meeting before their summer recess.
The new ordinance was first introduced by gay District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman on June 25, just days before the city's LGBTQ Pride parade. That followed a meeting of the historic preservation commission in May where it was revealed that under the original ordinance other flags would be allowed to be flown on the flagpole.
Mandelman in June proposed an amendment to quash that idea, which was also unanimously agreed to by the committee. District 5 Supervisor Dean Preston, vice chair of the committee, added his name as a co-sponsor of the ordinance. Committee Chair Supervisor Myrna Melgar (D7) and member Aaron Peskin (D3 and president of the board) were already listed as co-sponsors.
"Gilbert Baker created many monumental rainbow flags, but the flag at Harvey Milk Plaza remains Gilbert Baker's sole art installation," Mandelman said. "We have circulated one amendment for your consideration — to specify the flag shall fly at full-mast 24 hours each day, seven days a week. As I understand, that was Gilbert's intention and has been the practice of the installation for at least the last decade."
(Since 1997 when the flagpole and flag were installed, there have been only a few instances of other banners briefly flying on the flagpole, including a giant American flag after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down state sodomy laws in Lawrence v. Texas in 2003.)
The amendment was proffered "so it is very, very, very clear if questions arise in the future, as they have from time to time in the past," Mandelman said.
Gay former D8 supervisor Jeff Sheehy, who was friends with Baker, spoke during public comment.
Sheehy recalled when he, Baker, and others approached then-mayor Willie Brown with the idea of the flag as an art installation during the 1997 Castro Street Fair.
"Gilbert grabbed a couple of us and said, 'Let's go do it,'" Sheehy recalled. "He grabbed the mayor with his entourage. ... Mayor Brown had gone in big on the idea of monumental artwork. ... When Gilbert was pitching the mayor, his eyes lit up and you can tell this fit with his vision. He turned to his staff and said, 'Make this happen.'"
And happen it did, on the 20th anniversary of Milk's election to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors that November.
"He was a public artist, and this is his one remaining piece of public art," Sheehy said of Baker.
Terry Asten Bennett, a straight ally who, as the president of the Castro Merchants Association, is the current custodian of the flag, explained why it shouldn't be flown at half-mast.
"There are buses and cars on Market Street," said Asten Bennett, co-owner of Cliff's Variety. "But more than that, it's a symbol of hope Gilbert wanted all the world to see. ... I think it's so important for our whole community, our city and the world that we preserve this flag in perpetuity and make sure this beacon of hope flies above the Castro forever."
As the Bay Area Reporter previously reported, the city's historic preservation commission unanimously approved landmarking plans in May. But under its proposed ordinance, flags other than the rainbow banner could be flown. During a discussion at their May 15 meeting, the commissioners talked about what procedures would have to be followed for that to happen. The installation is located at Harvey Milk Plaza, seen as the front door to the LGBTQ neighborhood.
Mandelman had stressed to the B.A.R. that his intention is to landmark the six-stripe rainbow flag popularized by Baker.
Planning Department staff member Moses Corrette said back in May that some in the community wanted other flags flown from the flagpole from time to time, mentioning the Castro LGBTQ Cultural District, and said the original proposed ordinance made a provision for a certificate of appropriateness to allow that to happen.
Cultural district director Tina Aguirre reiterated to the B.A.R. July 23 that the district is supportive of the landmarking effort with the change that Mandelman proposed.
"Our work is to counter measures that erase queer and trans people, places, and culture, especially in the Castro," Aguirre stated. "While we would have appreciated an opportunity to have the Progressive Pride flown, we acknowledge that Gilbert Baker's flag plays a key role in the world and remains a powerful signal that San Francisco is a haven for us. We honor Gilbert Baker and the Pride flag."
The Progress Pride flag refers to a variation of the rainbow flag that includes a chevron of black, brown, light blue, pink, and white stripes that specifically represent people of color and the trans community. It was designed by Daniel Quasar in 2018.
Baker, who died in 2017, had long insisted his flag represented everyone, saying, "what I liked about the rainbow is that it fits all of us. It's all the colors. It represents all the genders. It represents all the races. It's the rainbow of humanity."
As the B.A.R. previously reported, Baker co-created the first rainbow flag with friends Lynn Segerblom, a straight ally who now lives in Southern California, and James McNamara, a gay man who died of AIDS-related complications in 1999. Baker and his friends came up with a rainbow flag design that had eight colored stripes, with one version also sporting a corner section of stars to mimic the design of the American flag. It debuted at the 1978 San Francisco Pride parade.
"It really is a three-person, not a one-person, flag making. Everybody played their part and then some," Segerblom told the B.A.R. in a 2018 phone interview from her home in Torrance, southwest of Los Angeles.
Baker would go on to eliminate the stars and reduce the number of colored stripes to six. Over the ensuing years, Baker turned that standard six-color banner into an international symbol of LGBTQ rights.
Baker died unexpectedly in 2017 at the age of 65, and the foundation created in his name donated a segment from one of the first rainbow flags that flew in front of San Francisco City Hall during the 1978 parade to the GLBT Historical Society Museum in the Castro, where it is now on public display.
In 2022, as the B.A.R. previously reported, the Gilbert Baker Foundation had hired architectural historian Shayne Watson, a lesbian who is an expert on the city's LGBTQ history, to conduct research on how the flagpole came to be as a first step toward declaring it a city landmark.
The foundation's president, Charley Beal, a gay man, gave a statement to the B.A.R. after the vote July 29. He was not in attendance at the committee meeting, but the foundation sent a letter in support.
"Gilbert Baker created the iconic rainbow flag in San Francisco and his commemorative art installation is a gift to the city he loved," Beal stated in part. "At a time when flag bans are on the rise, landmarking the Rainbow Flag at Harvey Milk Plaza reasserts this city's status as a sanctuary for all LGBTQ+ residents and visitors. May the Gilbert Baker flag installation welcome people for generations to come."
Other speakers
In addition to Sheehy and Asten Bennett, three other people spoke in the time allocated for public comment, all of whom supported the proposal and the amendment.
Harry Breaux, who introduced himself as a Castro ambassador, said that the six-stripe rainbow flag popularized by Baker should be a uniting symbol for the community. He quoted the late drag queen and Latino veteran José Julio Sarria's famous refrain, "United we stand, divided they catch us one by one."
"The Gilbert Baker flag is the seed from which these many flags have sprung," said Breaux, a gay man and long-term HIV survivor. "It is the one symbolic flag that can unite all the individual expressions that have divided us, and I sincerely hope it will."
Andrea Aiello, a lesbian who is the executive director of the Castro Community Benefit District, and Ralph Hibbs, a gay man who's on the CBD board (he was incorrectly identified as board chair during the meeting), also spoke. Hibbs read a statement from Beal, who could not attend due to a death in his family, saying that Russian President "Vladimir Putin has threatened to wipe the rainbow flag from the face of the earth" and "in China people have been arrested for flying the rainbow flag."
But "the rainbow flag is more than a prominent political symbol, it is an important work of art. As a work of art, it stands on its own and deserves landmark status," he said.
Aiello said people come from around the world to see the flag flapping above the windy Market Street thoroughfare.
"Visitors come from near and far to marvel at the flag," she said. "It needs to be flown 24/7."
Updated, 7/29/24: This article has been updated to state that the CBD board member was incorrectly identified as chair during the meeting.
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