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St. Louis flies transgender flag at city hall

ST. LOUIS – The St. Louis City Hall will have a rarely-flown flag on its pole for the city’s Pride week.

St. Louis officials hoisted the blue, pink and white-striped transgender flag Monday morning, becoming just the third city hall to do so after Philadelphia flew it last year and Boston flew it in May.

“Flying the transgender flag is a message we’re sending that the City of St. Louis is welcoming to everyone, regardless of who you love or how you identify yourself,” Mayor Francis Slay said. “We are a City that celebrates diversity, and we want to make sure that everyone knows that transgender individuals are respected and welcome in our community.”

The flag was created in 1999 by a trans woman named Monica Helms. The blue and pink signify the traditional colors for baby boys and girls respectively while the white represents either the transitionary period when a trasnperson is changing their gender, gender neutrality or a rejection of traditional binary view of gender.

The call to fly the flag came from PROMO Missouri, one of the state’s foremost LGBT advocacy organizations. Katie Stuckenschneider, a spokeswoman for PROMO, said the mayor’s administration was incredibly receptive to flying the flag and showing their solidarity with transgender people of all stripes.

In the wake of the Orlando shooting at a gay night club in which 49 people were killed, the pride month has taken on a renewed purpose in cities across the country as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people call for greater inclusion, tolerance and acceptance within the country as a whole. Stuckenschneider also said the timing was important to the trans community because after the homicide of a 20-year-old transgender woman in New Orleans last week.

“This was a very telling time to raise the flag this morning,” she said.

Stuckenschneider said she hoped the raising of the flag could become an educational opportunity for people unaware of the threats faced by the transgender community.