As Pride Month dawns, Kansas governor helps celebrate rainbow flag creator Gilbert Baker
Kansas residents and activists gathered with Gov. Laura Kelly last week for her signing of a proclamation honoring rainbow flag creator Gilbert Baker. (Photo from Kansas governor's office)
Happy Gilbert Baker Day!
Thanks to a proclamation from Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly signed Friday, we can celebrate the life and work of Parsons native Baker this June 2. He created a piece of American iconography that has spread across the globe and into the hearts of those who care for their gay neighbors: the rainbow pride flag.
Kelly Wall, a board member of PFLAG Lawrence, requested the day after reading about Baker in an authoritative piece by founding Kansas Reflector opinion editor C.J. Janovy. (You can also read Janovy’s work in the new anthology “Kansas Matters: Twenty-First-Century Writers on the Sunflower State.”)
Lauren Shepard of Parsons was on hand at the Statehouse to watch Kelly sign. She had just graduated from Pittsburg State University with a master’s degree. According to her, efforts to honor Baker locally ran into static.
“Ultimately, the town, the city commission ended up tabling the idea, so we pivoted and got together and started a Gilbert Baker Memorial Scholarship through the Parsons High School, where he graduated,” she told me. “So now every year we select a student that’s active in their OAQ, which is like a gay-straight alliance, it’s a student organization there at the high school.”
Wall was out of the state Friday, but a group assembled by her showed up to honor Baker. It included Shepard, several Lawrence activists and state Sen. Marci Francisco. I tagged along and noted that multiple groups had gathered on the second floor of the Statehouse for their own proclamation time with Kelly. One was promoting an “Asteroid Day.”
Inside the governor’s ceremonial office, group members realized that no one had actually brought a rainbow flag — the symbol for Pride Month and LGBTQ+ rights more generally.
No worries, Kelly told them.
She retreated into her actual office and returned bearing a rainbow flag coaster and a copy of Janovy’s book, “No Place Like Home: Lessons in Activism from LGBT Kansas,” which features rainbow stripes on the cover.
Crisis averted, the group took pictures with Kelly, the proclamation and the props. That was that.
Janis Guyot, the president of PFLAG Lawrence, holds a proclamation designating June 2 as Gilbert Baker Day in Kansas. (Photo by Clay Wirestone/Kansas Reflector)
No one on hand missed the broader implications. Baker had turned his back on his Kansas background, living in San Francisco and New York City. He had finally agreed to return to Parsons, Janovy writes, for a key to the city and film festival in 2017. A month before the events, Baker died at the too-young age of 65.
“It allows us to recognize one of our own who created an emblem that allows us to recognize all of LGBTQ across the country and across the world,” said Rachel Reed of Lawrence. “And it’s very, very important.”
Janis Guyot serves as president of Lawrence PFLAG and stood in for Wall at the signing. Afterward, she held the proclamation certificate as others in the group swirled around to take a look.
“I’m really happy that there’s something to celebrate for the LGBTQ world right now,” Guyot told me. “It’s tough time for all of them.”
Since Baker’s untimely death, we’ve seen a public push and pull over gay rights. Transgender folks — members of the movement from the beginning, whether they were identified as such or not — have been systematically excluded and discriminated against. The Kansas Legislature has repeatedly passed hateful laws.
Who knows what Baker might say about this recent turmoil. Given that he went by the drag name “Busty Ross,” I imagine he would bring an irreverent sense of humor along with his passion for making the world a better place.
Hopefully, he would say progress hasn’t stopped, and it won’t stop, regardless of small minds and even smaller hearts.
In an oral history from 2008, Baker suggested as much: “I do know that time is on our side and that the young people generation, and more importantly my generation, we have fought hard, and we have — we’ve worked on our parents, we have our own children, and we’re moving society forward. So I think we’re going to be all right. I mean, it may take a little more fight and a little more work than people want, but we’ll get there.”
Clay Wirestone is Kansas Reflector opinion editor. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.