Los Gatos celebrates first raising of Pride flag

Los Gatos raised the Progress Pride flag for the first time in its history on Monday after years of advocacy from LGBTQ+ rights advocates.

Several people spoke at town council meetings last June and December to convince the council to amend the town’s flag code to allow for a Pride flag raising. The motion passed in February. Several supporters said raising a Pride flag in town would help LGBTQ+ residents feel accepted. Dozens of representatives from local and county government and LGBTQ+ rights organizations attended the flag raising on Monday.

“Flying the Pride flag will not solve every challenge facing our LGBTQ residents, but it does send a clear, unmistakable message,” said Mayor Rob Moore during the flag raising ceremony. “You are seen, you belong here and your town stands with you.”

Desmond Kamas, a Los Gatos resident who is married to a man, said it was nice to see that Los Gatos taking a stand on the issue. He said that twice last year, people drove past him and yelled slurs, which made him feel like “a lot of things were just going backwards.”

“It feels pretty good today,” Kamas said. “I feel that we’re moving in the right direction and people care, and I hope to see more things like this in the future.”

He added that although there are good legal protections for LGBTQ+ residents, he would like to see more allies stand up for their queer neighbors and make sure that there are consequences to hateful actions, and he’d also like to see more positive events for the LGBTQ+ community.

During the ceremony, Moore acknowledged several people involved in advocating for the Pride flag to be flown in town, including his fiancee Kylie Clark, advocacy director for the Los Gatos Anti-Racism Coalition; Bay Area Municipal Elections Committee co-founders Ken Yeager and Wiggsy Sivertsen; former Los Gatos mayor Marico Sayoc; and student activists Nova Jayaraj and Siyona Singhal. Moore acknowledged the backlash Sayoc faced during the COVID-19 pandemic when she suggested adding a rainbow stripe to the crosswalks in front of Los Gatos Library in recognition of the town’s LGBTQ+ community.

“At a time when Donald Trump and our federal administration are restricting healthcare access for transgender and queer individuals, rolling back protections for LGBTQ youth and spewing hate and bigotry, Los Gatos is doing the exact opposite by taking a stand for our LGBTQ community and raising the Pride flag,” Clark said.

Jayaraj was involved in getting numerous students to speak at council meetings in favor of raising the Pride flag. On Monday she spoke in front of the crowd with a cast on her leg after a surgery and leaned on her crutches.

“Among showing that youth voices matter in our town and they want to be included, raising the flag today shows that we want Los Gatos to be a community that everybody can feel a part of and feel safe in,” Jayaraj said.

Los Gatos’ decision to raise the Pride flag also drew support from visitors like Pride Social South County president and founder Terry Hernandez and assistant board treasurer Bertha Escalera. They had previously spoken at town council meetings in support of flying the Pride flag in town. They said the south Santa Clara County cities of Gilroy, Morgan Hill and San Martin are “very conservative.” Hernandez said that in Gilroy, LGBTQ+ advocates have to get 150 signatures on a petition and collect $552 for a flag raising fee in addition to securing a majority vote by the city council to raise the flag.

Planning commissioner Emily Thomas, who works a science teacher at Los Gatos High School, also attended the event through her support of the Los Gatos Anti-Racism Coalition, an organization that supported the amendment to the flag ordinance to raise the Pride flag. Thomas recalled growing up in Los Gatos and having friends and classmates who didn’t necessarily feel like their community was supportive of them.

“Over the past 12 years that I have been a teacher, there have been lots of changes overall, with simple things like asking preferred pronouns,” Thomas said. “And over the years, I have had students that identify as trans, and it’s been special and a privilege to be able to support those students because sometimes the only place that they are out in themselves and their identity is actually at school.”

The town council’s vote to raise the Pride flag only applied to this year, and Thomas said it was “disappointing” that the council would have to vote to raise it every year. She said a candidate’s stance on raising the Pride flag would affect who she would vote for. Moore and councilmembers Mary Bedame and Rob Rennie’s seats will be up for election in November.

“I think it is an opportunity to hold our elected officials accountable,” Thomas said. “It is really important for community members that are going to be voting in that election in the fall to ask individuals if they would be supporting this initiative.”

When asked what other LGBTQ+ rights issues he plans to address, Moore said he would like to see “the Pride flag raised on more than one flagpole in the future” and “to continue publicly supporting our LGBTQ neighbors,” although he doesn’t know exactly what that would look like.