Utile Celebrates LGBTQIA2S+ Pride Month with Logo Art from Kyri Lorenz

June is LGBTQIA2S+ Pride Month! As part of our ongoing JEDI initiative, we continue to engage talented local artists to reimagine Utile’s logo for commemorative observance months throughout the year. We are thrilled to present this month’s beautiful design by Kyri Lorenz (they/he). 

Statement from the artist:

The history of modern LGBTQIA+ activism started with a series of riots at the Stonewall Inn beginning June 28, 1969, when the gay bar was raided by a police force that quickly became violent. When the queer community fought back with thrown bricks and other debris, chanting and singing even as they were beat and shoved into patrol wagons, it shone a light on the mistreatment and criminalization we had been dealing with for centuries, and kickstarted the modern gay rights movement.

Every inch of progress has been won after fights for survival and recognition.  After a few landmark victories, like the Supreme Court case Obergefell v Hodges, which established the federal right to same-sex marriage, my community is staring again into the maw of those who wish us silenced and erased from history. Just this year, 30 states have passed anti-trans laws targeting transgender minors, some of the most vulnerable of our population. Texas is arresting affirming parents on charges of child abuse. Others are banning hormone replacement therapies, or excluding trans youth from any participation in sports based on junk science. Florida has banned any and all mention of diverse gender and sexuality in public schools and forbids school counselors and teachers from giving any guidance or mentorship to struggling LGBTQ students — a draconian discriminatory law nicknamed the “Don’t Say Gay” Bill. The impending repeal of Roe v Wade, something which affects our community in many complex ways, also leaves Obergefell a clear next target for repeal. Federal protections for ANY LGBTQ rights have yet to be codified into law.

But the LGBTQIA+ community has been fighting these battles for as long as we have been a community, before even Stonewall. We are resilient in the face of our continued victimization, like a warren of rabbits. A great many of us don’t survive these battles, and their names will be remembered and cherished by we who continue to push onward. We will continue to grow past the confines we constantly find ourselves having constructed around us, like dandelions growing through the concrete of a sidewalk. And we will be bright, and loud, and our very existence —  vibrant and open and proud— will be a powerful tool of progress.

The flags represented here only show a fraction of the identities in our community: the inclusive rainbow, bisexual, transgender, asexual, lesbian, pansexual, nonbinary, aromantic, genderqueer, and intersex.