HUNTINGTON BEACH, Calif. — The rainbow-colored pride flag that for the past two years has flown above Huntington Beach City Hall during LGBTQ Pride Month could soon be banned. The City Council voted 4-3 last week to develop an ordinance that would allow only American, U.S. Military, POW/MIA, State of California, Huntington Beach and Orange County flags. 

And Tuesday night, the City Council will consider the resulting ordinance. If approved, the ordinance would reverse a 2021 vote that allowed the flag to be flown above Huntington Beach City Hall from Harvey Milk Day, May 22, through Pride Month in June. 

“It has nothing to do with segregating or being anything else to another group,” City Council member Pat Burns said last week when proposing the ban. “It has nothing to do with that. It’s recognizing we are one.”

But members of the LGBTQ community say the proposed flag ban is “a disappointment. It just means one less city is carrying the flag during Pride Month and acknowledging that LGBTQ folks are everywhere in OC. We deserve to have that recognition and acceptance of how far we’ve come as a community,” Stephanie Camacho-Van Dyke, director of advocacy and education for the LGBTQ Center of OC, told Spectrum News. 

Similar to last Tuesday, when members of the LGBTQ community showed up at city council to oppose the proposed flag ban, the group plans to rally its supporters again this week “to show up and speak out to share their personal stories about why it’s important to keep the flag up during Pride Month,” she said.

First flown during a San Francisco Gay Freedom Day Parade in 1978, the Pride flag was sewn by Gilbert Baker — a friend of the first openly gay man elected to public office, San Francisco Board of Supervisors member Harvey Milk, who was assassinated later that same year. Designed as a symbol of hope, the original flag was made with eight colors to symbolize the diversity of the LGBTQ community.

Its modern incarnation takes many forms but is often presented as six stripes. The red that tops the striped flag stands for life; orange for healing; yellow for sunlight; green for nature; indigo for serenity; and violet for spirit. While the pride flag is flown over numerous local, state and federal government buildings as a show of support, Huntington Beach is not alone in its efforts to ban it. Recent years have seen city governments in states across the country disallow the flag, often resulting in protests.