The pride of being LGBTQ and putting on the badge

This month, as we do each June, we are celebrating Pride in San Francisco. This year, there was much debate about whether to allow LGBTQ peace officers to march in the annual Pride Parade while in uniform.

This column won’t address that debate, nor any deal to resolve it that’s been made. Instead, it will report that on Wednesday, June 1, LGBTQ firefighters, police officers and sheriff ’s deputies gathered to raise the Pride flag at our main jail. And that the sheriff asked me to say a few words. Here is what I said:

It is fitting that we stand here today. Pride was a concept we fought for long before Stonewall, and it began right outside the jails we deputies manage.

Back in the 1950s, there was a drag queen named José Sarria, also known as the Widow Norton. José wanted to be a teacher but was arrested and convicted on a morals charge — the crime of being gay. This conviction meant he could never become the teacher he wanted to be.

He instead became a performer, at a club named the Black Cat, and

as he became famous, he spoke up. He often said, “There’s nothing wrong with being gay — the crime is getting caught.”

When the bar closed for the night, he often led a crowd to stand beneath the windows of the old Branch Jail on Stockton, where men and women were being held for the crime of being different, knowing that their names might be published the next day in the newspaper for public indecency. José stood beneath those barred windows and sang “God save us nelly queens” (to the tune of “God Save the Queen”) to let those arrestees know it was not time to give up hope.

In August 1966, a riot occurred at Compton’s Cafeteria in the Tenderloin, in response to the San Francisco police harassment of drag queens and trans people. Those trans activists fought back and sparked a revolution.

Three years later, on June 28, 1969, New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn, a bar in Greenwich Village infamous for allowing same-sex dancing and drag queens. The LGBTQ patrons and neighborhood residents again fought back.

A year later in the same city, the first Pride parade was conducted. The organizers emphasized that there would be no dress code, that individuals would come to the 60-block walk as they were: drag queens and leather daddies, dykes on bikes, and people in uniform. Five thousand showed up.

They chanted: “Say it clear. Say it loud. Gay is good, gay is proud.”

In 1978, Gilbert Baker introduced a flag to the San Francisco Pride Parade, in eight rainbow colors to celebrate the diversity of the movement. The rainbow, like the one in the Bible, was a covenant with the community, a promise of light and laughter after the storm.

Fifty years ago, we members of the LGBTQ community could not serve in the military. Whether we could teach was soon to be on the California ballot. And we certainly could not have worked in law enforcement.

But some of us chose to make the change from within, to infiltrate those who had oppressed us. We made a difference. The San Francisco Sheriff ’s Department led the nation in teaching officers about AIDS. We were the first law enforcement agency in the state to introduce and get certified Transgender Awareness Training.

Takes a lot of courage to put on the badge. Takes twice as much when you come from a marginalized community. Many in the old guard did not think we should serve. To this day, 1 in 5 LGBTQ officers experiences employment discrimination.

Takes a lot of courage to put on the badge. Like the colors of the flag, each of the seven points of the star has a meaning, one for each of the virtues. The first is courage and the greatest is truth.

Takes a lot of courage to put on the badge. There are people in our own community who tell us to be ashamed of our uniform. And we tell them we are defined by both that rainbow and that badge.

But Pride is not only about the past; pride is about today and the promise of the future.

Today we stand in the sunlight, proud of who we are, both LGBTQ and first responders.

Today we raise a flag. We are not the Marines, having taken Iwo Jima. Rather, we have taken a stand. We make the radical claim that we can serve both of our communities with honor. When we raise this flag, we promise that we will honor the diversity promised by those colors, and we will continue to be the agents of change within an organization that needs us.

We thank the sworn LGBTQ for their courage, and their pride.

God save us nelly queens.