Happy Pride Month 🏳️‍🌈

7 FACTS ABOUT PRIDE MONTH

1. Pride is a month long celebration that is dedicated to not only celebrating sexual diversity but an opportunity to peacefully protest and raise political awareness of current issues facing the community - such as discrimination and violence.

June was chosen as Pride Month because it marks the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots in 1969.

2. The Stonewall riots were a series of spontaneous demonstrations that lasted over a period of 6 days by members of the gay community in response to a police raid that began at the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Lower Manhattan in New York City.

3. Brenda Howard is known as the "Mother of Pride." She coordinated the first ever LGBT Pride march that commemorated the one year anniversary of the Stonewall riots.

4. The New York Pride Parade is one of the largest and most well known parades to take place with over 5 million participants during the 2019 celebrations.

5. The US city with the highest LGBTQ+ population is New York. Followed by Los Angeles, Chicago and San Francisco.

6. The Pride flag was invented by Gilbert Baker and was first exhibited at the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day parade in 1978. It quickly caught on, and today it’s a well-known symbol for LGBTQ+ people everywhere.

In the years since, the Pride flag has continually evolved. Today, many LGBTQ+ people favor the Progress Pride flag, while others have designed different flags for their own specific identities.

7. With all of the Pride celebrations happening in the US it's easy to forget that homosexuality is still criminalized in many countries all around the world, and queer people are neither accepted nor tolerated in many other places.

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It's important continually support and uplift LGBTQ+ leaders and work toward true equality world wide embracing all sexualities and identities. One way you can start small is by downloading and sharing these facts about Pride on your social media!