SF leaders wear Pride on their sleeves at flag raising event 

Mayor Daniel Lurie invited San Francisco’s LGBTQ leaders to raise the rainbow flag with him on his City Hall balcony as he proclaimed June as Pride Month. He gave an address in which he promised the City by the Bay would always retain its uniquely San Francisco values.

“At a time when LGBTQ+ rights are under attack across the country, in San Francisco we are sending a different message: You are welcome here, you are seen here, you are safe here,” Lurie said at the June 6 event. “When trans-affirming health care is being attacked, we support Lyon-Martin’s primary and mental health care. For our LGBTQ+ immigrant community who find refuge in our city, we are committed to funding immigrant legal services and remain committed to organizations like the LGBT Asylum Project and Parivar. When our LGBT youth are scared for their safety, we support them through amazing organizations like LYRIC, which empower and uplift our young people.”

As other outlets have reported , Lurie has been attempting to balance staying true to those values while not getting caught up in a war of words with the Trump administration, with which the city has significant financial entanglements. (The mayor has responded in the past to Trump’s assertion he wanted to reopen a federal prison on Alcatraz and an executive order targeting the Presidio Trust.) 

Asked through a spokesperson to comment on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s decision to rename a ship that had been named for slain San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official in California, Lurie stated, “From the Board of Supervisors to the U.S. Navy, Harvey Milk dedicated his life to serving our city and our country, and he did it with courage and distinction. Our city has proudly followed his leadership, marking what would have been his 95th birthday last month and now Pride Month. Harvey was a model for how all of us, across this country, can contribute to our communities.”

In his remarks, the mayor invoked Milk, saying, “When we raise this flag we are celebrating everyone here today, and the activists who came before us. … We remember those who spoke loudly, like Harvey Milk, and we remember the everyday residents: our LGBTQ+ seniors who blazed a trail, our trans neighbors who demand safety, and our young people who deserve to dream big and grow up in a city that protects them.”

In his $15.9 billion balanced budget proposal released at the end of May, Lurie preserved funding for legal services impacting LGBTQ and immigrant communities, as well as grants for Castro neighborhood community ambassadors and Jane Warner Plaza. 

Gay state Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) did speak to the Milk ship matter, saying bluntly that, “This country is being run by psychopaths, and I don’t say that lightly. It’s like they get joy out of hurting people.”

“What a petty, despicable move,” Wiener added, regarding the Milk ship. He had just come from a news conference on the matter at Jane Warner Plaza.

Wiener invoked the name of gay makeup artist Andry Jose Hernández Romero, a Venezuelan national who had been seeking asylum in the U.S. when he was extrajudicially sent by the Trump administration to a megaprison in El Salvador without a hearing. 

“Sometimes the news cycle passes us by and people forget that there are still hundreds of Venezuelans sitting in a gulag in El Salvador,” Wiener said. 

San Francisco Pride Executive Director Suzanne Ford, a transgender woman, had declined to name Romero an honorary grand marshal after longtime community leaders called upon her to do so; however, SF Pride did hold an event in May and will hold another later this month on issues facing queer migrants. 

But all this has made Wiener more proud to be a San Franciscan, he said.

“I am particularly proud now with everything happening in the country,” he said. “It warms my heart knowing the beauty of San Francisco and the beauty of this city.”

Honey Mahogany, a Black queer trans person who is executive director of the city’s Office of Transgender Initiatives, agreed. Introducing Lurie, Mahogany said, “The fact that we are willing to fight for what is right and the fact that we will never back down” is what makes the city so special. 

Gay Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman, who as District 8 supervisor represents the Castro on the board, saluted the LGBTQ community’s ability to handle bullying provocations from people and forces against equality.

“I love that the theme of Pride this year is ‘Queer Joy is Resistance,’ because nobody knows how to deal with schoolyard bullies better than the queers,” Mandelman said. “It’s just true. I have experienced it and I think we learned how to be sassy, have fun, but resist at the same time. I think that is why it was trans folks and drag queens who led the way in so many of these uprisings that started our queer movement back in the 1960s.”

Mandelman also saluted Ford during his remarks, saying it is no easy task to satisfy everybody when putting together the annual Pride festivities. (This year’s parade is Sunday, June 29, starting at the foot of Market Street.)

“We are a difficult community to try to organize a giant queer party for, but Suzanne Ford manages to do it each year, come what may,” he said. “And each year the challenges are different and they’re always awful and overwhelming, but you manage to get it done.”

Ford, who is from Kentucky initially, thanked the city for being welcoming and inclusive.

“I knew that if some day I could get to this city that I’d have a chance to be me,” Ford said. “I will tell you: I want that for everyone in our country, and now that I’m in San Francisco, I get to bring my full self to my job every day. … The world will be watching the last weekend in June to see that here in San Francisco, we still hold the same values.”

Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis (D) also made an appearance, saying America – and the liberal bastion on its Pacific coast – will not bow down to autocracy. Kounalakis served as ambassador to Hungary during the Obama administration and has experience with that country’s autocratic leader, Viktor Orbán.

“This is the United States of America and we are not going back,” said Kounalakis, who is running for governor in 2026. “This is the State of California and the City of San Francisco, and we will always recognize that because of our diversity, because we celebrate everything that makes us human, we are the fourth largest economy in the world, and the greatest democracy that has ever existed.”

At the end of the event, before a light reception, Lurie presented the Pride Month proclamation to Ford.