thinking about Lexington's pride flags

One of kiddo’s favorite podcasts is the delightful Forever Ago, each episode of which dives into the history of something specific, such as the weekend, Black cowboys, etc. Kiddo often listens to podcasts in the morning while waiting for (or eating) breakfast, and on Saturday morning, knowing that we were visiting Lexington Pride later that day, she pulled up the episode on the history of the rainbow Pride flag.

With that history fresh in our minds, I noticed something different about the rainbow flags that fly in downtown Lexington during hte month of June: Lexington does not fly the common six-stripe rainbow flag. Instead, it flies a version of the flag with pink in it. I was so distracted by the pink that I didn’t count the other colors, but I’m guessing this is most likely the original eight-color flag designed by Gilbert Baker in 1978, as featured in that Forever Ago episode and as seen below.

Since Saturday, I’ve been trying to puzzle out why Lexington flies an alternate rainbow flag instead of the one that’s most well known. This is particularly interesting given that it stands in contrast with the six-color rainbow crosswalks that have been downtown since 2017 and were updated in 2021:

[Picture retrieved from City Celebrates Pride Month with New Rainbow Crosswalks]

I’m sure that I could figure this out by sending an email to the Lexington-Fayette County Government, but in the meantime, my best guess is that this might be a visual reference to another rainbow in Lexington’s history. According to a blog post from Kentucky for Kentucky, a local business that I love for their in-your-face Kentucky pride, which I definitely had as an 18-year-old moving to Utah for college)

In 1975, Lexington prepared to celebrate the city’s bicentennial, encouraging artists to submit their vision for a mural commemorating the anniversary. The winning design would be painted on the side of the Phillip Gall building, which once stood in the center of downtown facing the old courthouse. Ellsworth “Skip” Taylor, the art director of KET at the time, turned in a hand-drawn design that captured his feeling about the town he’d adopted as his own. Skip knew that Lexington was the real pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, and so he penned a simple sentiment to reflect this vision. He won the Lexington Art League contest and a sign-painter re-created the Rainbow in the middle of downtown.

[Picture retrieved from Lexington Rainbow]

This rainbow has quite the story, going from iconic downtown mural to lost print before being revived by Kentucky for Kentucky in 2014. This isn’t an eight-color rainbow either, but as you can see above, it does have pink in it. While it wasn’t meant as a pride icon in 1975 (in fact, it appears to predate the rainbow pride flag), it’s been locally understood as such in recent years. In fact, the Bluegrass Community Foundation, which raised—and continues to raise—money for the downtown rainbow crosswalks uses the Lexington rainbow print at the top of their fundraising page.

Of course, this is just speculation at this point—even worse, it’s speculation by a well-meaning-but-still-bumbling-straight-guy. I need to take another look at the downtown flags, I should learn more about local queer history before trying to guess things out on my own, and I probably could have sent an email to the city/county government in the time that it took me to write all of this up. I’ll consider this a starting point and a reminder to do more and learn more.

• LGBTQ
• Lexington
• Pride
• Kentucky for Kentucky