06/01/2026
In 1992 there were no protections keeping a person from being fired for being gay, so my mom was out in private but closeted at work. In the 90s anti-lgbtqia+ violence, as the AIDS epidemic stormed across the nation, scapegoating the LGBTQIA+ community, vicious violence and police brutality against the LGBTQIA+ community was at an all time high. Brutal and vicious attacks constantly made local and national news.
A rainbow then wasn’t a happy tee shirt at Target that you could wear with impunity. It was a gesture of defiance that could bring violence down on you and your family and anyone that rainbow glow fell on. More common was the triangle my mom defiantly wore as a pin on her bag and on a little sign at our house.
Pride then wasn’t a celebration of s*x and love and joy. It was showing up in ways that took up space and made folks uncomfortable—and the gay men who bravely showed up in b***y shorts and leather, bare chested and defiant, and the le****ns who showed up, with their cropped hair and their piercings, holding hands and kissing, understood that this parade could be the thing that tipped over into violence.
And still they danced and kissed and held hands and threw glitter and love in the air. Past the people who might be waiting to kill them for it.
This design is by Bracken LeClair for Riot, honoring their grandmother and all the le****ns who lived through that time and chose love anyway. The stones and the bottle represent the Stonewall Inn, where the first Pride riots took place when Marsha P. Johnson, a young trans s*x worker being arrested for the crime of wearing a dress, flung a bottle into the mirror at the Stonewall crying “I got my civil rights!” The colors on the bottle are the colors of the le***an flag, to honor the women who were incarcerated on the same street for the crime of being gay and dressing in pants, who set their mattresses on fire and threw them out the windows in protest and support of the gay and trans folk being beaten by police down below.
Happy Pride month, loves. I see you, for all you suffer and sacrifice to live authentically. I love you, for how hard you choose love.