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Pride! In the Name of Love…🏳🌈❤🌈
1st June marks the beginning of Pride month – an extra opportunity to promote equality, acceptance and diversity and celebrate LGBTQIA+ communities across the world - which we should, of course, be promoting 365 days a year.
June is the chosen month for Pride to honour the infamous ‘Stonewall Uprising’ in New York City’s Greenwich Village, at the Stonewall Inn on 28th June 1969. It helped to kickstart the modern fight to abolish discriminatory laws against the LGBT+ community.
Some Pride events take place at other points in the Summer – for example, London Pride often takes place in July (to commemorate the first official UK Gay Pride Rally in London on 1 July 1972) and The Manchester Pride Festival usually takes place during the August Bank Holiday weekend.
So, what can you do? Let EuHu inspire you…
Famous LGBT+ People
You could encourage your children to find out about prominent LGBT+ people. Here are just some of the people you could look at:
✓ Stormé DeLarverie: Involved in the Stonewall Uprising in New York in 1969 and a prominent American LGBT+ activist.
✓ Alan Turing: English mathematician and computer scientist, probably best known for helping to break the Enigma Code during WW2.
✓ Harvey Milk: American civil and human rights leader. Asked his friend Gilbert Baker to design a symbol to represent the LGBT+ community in 1978.
✓ Phyll Opoku-Gyimah: Co-founder of UK Black Pride.
✓ Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (known simply as Colette): French novelist.
✓ Sir Ian McKellan: English actor.
✓ Frida Kahlo: Mexican artist.
✓ Bayard Rustin: American civil rights activist.
✓ Oscar Wilde: Irish poet and playwright
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✓ Sandi Toksvig: Danish-British writer, comedienne and broadcaster.
✓ Martina Navratilova: Czech/American tennis player.
✓ Tom Daley and his husband Dustin Lance Black: English diver and American screenwriter, director, producer and LGBT rights activist, respectively.
The Rainbow Flag
An obvious way to celebrate this month is with prominent Rainbow flags. The Rainbow Flag was originally created by Gilbert Baker in 1978, at the request of his friend, Harvey Milk, as a way to represent the LGBT+ community.
Each colour has its own meaning and you could discuss this with your children so that they understand the significance of the flag. PSHE lessons could be the perfect opportunity to cover this. Even the youngest children can understand that all people should be treated fairly.
RED for Life
ORANGE for Healing
YELLOW for Sunlight
GREEN for Nature
BLUE for Serenity/Harmony
VIOLET for Spirit
And finally…
As we know, all of this should be taking place 12 months a year, not just one. To really raise the profile of Pride, you could encourage your school to apply for the Rainbow Flag Award (a national award that focuses on positive LGBT+ inclusion and visibility).
For more information, see Rainbow Flag Award.
