The City of Cathedral City is proudly flying the Progress Pride flag in front of City Hall in Downtown all month long as we recognize June 2024 as LGBTQ+ Pride Month. The City will also be displaying a rainbow colored lighting scheme at night in front of the Civic Center.
Each year, June is recognized as National Pride Month as it marks the anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion that propelled the modern-day lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer civil rights movement.
Councilmember Raymond Gregory stopped by on Monday, June 3, 2024, to help raise the flag. The Progress Pride Flag adds a white, pink, and light blue stripe to represent the Trans community. The black stripe is also a nod to the thousands of individuals that the community lost during the HIV/AIDS crisis in the 1980s and 1990s.
The City Council of Cathedral City has a long history of being supportive of the LGBTQ+ community by sponsoring the annual Cathedral City LGBT+ Days festival as a signature event during the last weekend in March. It was also the first city in the Coachella Valley to pass an municipal ordinance mandating single stall public restrooms in Cathedral City to be re-classified as “gender-neutral,” fly a rainbow flag at City Hall, and create a “Rainbow Crossing” named after the late Mayor Gregory S. Pettis, the first openly gay elected official in Riverside County.
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), an educational entity of the largest national lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) civil rights organization, released its 2023 Municipal Equality Index (MEI) Scorecard rating the City of Cathedral City with a perfect score of 100. This is the highest recognition by HRC and comes after a thorough review of Cathedral City policies and practices including having both a police department liaison as well as a city executive officer liaison for the LGBTQ+ community.
