By Staff Reporter |
For the third year in a row, the Arizona governor made a bold statement for Pride Month.
Governor Katie Hobbs again raised the Pride flag stories above the American flags on the Executive Tower on Monday in recognition of Pride Month. Hobbs pledged her loyalty to advancing and protecting LGBTQ+ ideologies.
“I’m proud to fly the Pride banner from the Executive Tower in celebration of Pride Month,” said Hobbs. “I will always stand for the freedom of Arizonans to be who they are, love who they love, and live with dignity and without fear.”
These flags are technically an expansion of the original rainbow-based Pride flag because they include the colors light pink, light blue, and white to represent transgenderism as well as black and brown to represent people with brown or black skin tones.
Pride Month was first officially recognized by the federal government in 1999 under President Bill Clinton, initially called “Gay and Lesbian Pride Month.” Then, in 2011, President Barack Obama expanded Pride Month recognition into what it consists of today.
During his first term in 2017, President Donald Trump didn’t offer federal recognition of Pride Month.
However, the first Pride Parade in Arizona took place in Phoenix in 1981 — about a decade after the first pride marches occurred in response to the 1970 Stonewall Riots in New York. The riots erupted following a police raid on a gay bar in Manhattan and lasted nearly a week.
Hobbs has continued her commitment to Pride Month despite the growing reluctance of other major cultural players to continue doing so. A frequent supporter of LGBTQ+ ideologies, Google, announced earlier this year it would no longer highlight Pride Month by default on Google Calendar. The corporation said the continued recognition of Pride Month wasn’t “scalable or sustainable,” citing the burden of recognizing the ever-increasing number of “cultural moments” globally.
Hobbs has flown the Pride flags above the American flags every summer since taking office.
During last summer’s Pride Month, Hobbs vetoed legislation guaranteeing equality of care for gender transition reversals, dubbed the “Detransitioner Bill of Rights.” This year, Hobbs vetoed bills limiting school locker room usage by gender, barring gender changes on birth certificates, preventing any funding to higher education institutes teaching students about gender identity, and precluding legal recognition of gender transitions.
During her first Pride Month as governor, Hobbs used an Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) drone to film the Pride flags. Reporting on the matter was delayed until the following year because it took the governor’s office nine months to respond to public records requests.
As reported initially, ADOT drone usage is intended for inspections and surveys of work concerning state infrastructure.
Hobbs also used state time to hold several ceremonies to watch the unfurling of the flags from the balcony and then admire the flags from the ground below, followed by an hour-long “Pride Roundtable” with those same guests.
Hobbs’ first executive order expanded discrimination protections to include prohibitions against “gender identity” discrimination in state employment and contracts.
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