San Antonio’s LGBTQ+ neighborhood is celebrating 50 years of Satisfaction within the Alamo Metropolis.
To commemorate the kick-off of Satisfaction month and this half-century milestone, San Antonio Metropolis Corridor raised a rainbow flag Monday morning for the fifth 12 months in a row.
Although Satisfaction month commemorates the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York Metropolis, the celebration took a couple of years to come back to San Antonio. On the time, lots of Alamo Metropolis LGBTQ+ residents opted as a substitute to have fun Satisfaction amongst Houston’s vibrant neighborhood.
Fifty years in the past, LGBTQ+ SaN Antonians marched on the Alamo chanting “two, 4, six, eight — homosexual is simply pretty much as good as straight!” The San Antonio Categorical-Information reported on the historic event, noting {that a} crowd of fewer than 50 “cheering gays” comprised the modest march, which was met with “chilly stares” and “laughter” from some onlookers.
However Satisfaction in San Antonio has solely gotten greater, louder and gayer since then.
“For 5 a long time, our neighborhood has continued to face sturdy and communicate out and present up in braveness, love, and satisfaction,” Michael Rendon, chair of San Antonio’s LGBTQIA Advisory Fee, mentioned at Monday’s flag-raising ceremony on the steps of Metropolis Corridor. “San Antonio has proven that visibility issues and raises the Satisfaction flag that sends a message to each LGBTQ particular person: you’re welcome right here, you’re beloved right here, and you’re valued right here.”
Rendon was joined on the ceremony by different members of San Antonio’s LGBTQ+ neighborhood, together with District 2 Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez and Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones, town’s first overtly homosexual mayor.
Jones spoke of the significance of flying the flag over metropolis corridor as a reminder of the progress achieved since that first Satisfaction celebration — and of the work nonetheless wanted to be finished.
“I feel it’s additionally a robust reminder and affirmation over the course of their life, all of the progress they’ve seen,” Mayor Jones mentioned on the ceremony. “A few of that, sadly, being wiped away, however all of the extra essential to remind younger folks, particularly, of how far we’ve come, how a lot progress we now have misplaced, sadly, simply inside these quick final couple of years, and the significance of continuous to withstand.”
Previously 12 months, Gov. Greg Abbott waged a tradition struggle on the rainbow crosswalks put in by San Antonio and different Texas cities, mandating that they take away the ornament or threat dropping TxDOT funding. Regardless of metropolis efforts to acquire an exemption, San Antonio’s Satisfaction Crosswalks had been eliminated in February.
Nonetheless, lower than a month later, metropolis officers discovered a workaround as a type of what McKee-Rodriguez referred to Monday as “a little bit of malicious compliance.”
In lieu of rainbows on the roads — that are below state purview — rainbow sidewalks now adorn two blocks of Important Avenue in San Antonio’s Satisfaction Cultural Heritage District. These sidewalks belong to town.
“We would’ve needed to do what the state desires on their property,” Councilmember Sukh Kaur, whose District 1 consists of the Satisfaction district, advised KSAT on the time. “However we’re doing what we wish on our property.”
As one other milestone in Satisfaction’s fiftieth 12 months in San Antonio, the normal rainbow flag is now joined by the Progress Satisfaction Flag, an up to date, extra inclusive illustration of the LGBTQ+ neighborhood that acknowledges trans, nonbinary and Black and Brown members. The 2018 variant is being flown in entrance of metropolis corridor.
The standard rainbow flag, with a star and the Alamo within the heart to have fun town and state, adorns a flag pole on prime of Metropolis Corridor, beneath the American flag and above a Spurs flag, as if sorting town’s June 2026 priorities.
San Antonio’s Satisfaction Parade shall be held Saturday, June 27.
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