SF launches Pride Month with celebration, reflection, and protest

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) -- City leaders and LGBTQ+ advocates across San Francisco marked the official start of Pride Month on Friday with events that celebrated community and underscored the activism at Pride's core.

From Twin Peaks to the Castro, community members emphasized Pride is both a celebration and a protest, especially in a year where advocates say attacks on the transgender community have reignited a sense of urgency.

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"We're not going to tolerate that," said San Francisco resident Chad Davis-Montgomery, one of dozens of volunteers who helped lay out the pink triangle on Twin Peaks - a decades-old symbol of both remembrance and resistance.

During the Nazi regime, the pink triangle was used to mark queer people during the Holocaust, similarly to how Jewish people were marked by the Star of David. Organizer Patrick Carney said the giant triangle at Twin Peaks is still used as an educational tool to remind others of its dark history.

Earlier Friday morning, city leaders raised the Pride flag at City Hall - the same site where gay rights icon and former San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk was assassinated. Mayor Daniel Lurie and other city leaders leaned into the city's legacy of LGBTQ+ inclusion.

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"When we raise this flag, we are celebrating everyone here today and the activists who came before us," Lurie said. "Let it remind us of how far we've come and how much further we will go when we show up for each other, fight for each other."

But the mood wasn't entirely celebratory. In the Castro, a group of LGBTQ+ veterans rallied in protest of the Trump administration's Wednesday decision to rename the USNS Harvey Milk.

"I am heartbroken by what they are doing to us veterans," said one protester.

The mix of joy, resistance, and remembrance set the tone for a Pride Month that organizers say will continue to celebrate identity - while also confronting threats to the community head-on.