Welcome to Interesting If True, the podcast that has a gay old time. If Jim were here it would be old gay time… I'm your host this week, Shea, and with me is: I'm Aaron, and this week I learned that despite June being Pride Month, mommies Proudest boys really don’t like celebrating it… weird. And since we're in the studio again… It’s beer time!! If you were a 4Wrath listener you may remember this draft, with it being Pride month I thought it could do with a re-taste. This Week’s 1st Beer Don't Be Mean To People (A Golden Rule Saison) Ponysaurus Brewing Co. in Durham, NC * Style: Farmhouse Ale - Saison * ABV:6% * Score: 86 * Aaron: 10 * Shea: 10 This Week’s Show With this month being Pride month I wanted to make sure we took a show to learn you some of the amazing things members of the LGBTQ+ community have done to further their acceptance into society. These are people who have faced an uphill battle for their entire lives, they are fighting for the same basic rights all other humans should be privy to. I’m sure this month you have seen a number of rainbow flags flying, whether in your home towns or in various national ad campaigns. Have you ever thought about where that flag comes from? I did, and it’s a pretty empowering story. Before the rainbow-striped Pride flag was created, the gay community tended to use the pink triangle as a symbol, adapted from the badge that gay prisoners were forced to wear in Nazi concentration camps. During World War II, Nazis forced gay men in camps to wear a downward-pointing triangle, with around 100,000 estimated to have been held prisoner and 65,000 thought to have been killed. The pink triangle was most famously adapted by the HIV advocacy group ACT UP. There was also some use of the Greek symbol lambda, green carnations, blue feathers, ace playing cards, and a purple handprint. Lambda represents energy and balance and was primarily used by the Gay Activists Alliance in the 1970s. Green carnations first appeared when Oscar Wilde adopted them for his entourage in the late 1800s. The purple hand can be traced back to a protest in 1969: After the San Francisco Examiner printed a homophobic report on gay bars, locals protested outside the paper’s offices. Employees dumped ink onto the protestors, who then used the ink to slap hand-prints along the building to show that they had been there. None of those symbols was particularly widespread in modern times, however. The history of the Pride flag can be traced back to Harvey Milk, the famous San Francisco city Supervisor, and his friend Gilbert Baker. Harvey Milk, for those that don’t know, was a visionary civil and human rights leader who became one of the first openly gay elected officials in the United States when he won a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1977. If you haven’t seen the movie Milk starring Sean Penn I definitely recommend it, you can get a feel for how terribly the LGBTQ+ community was treated but also the inspiring hope they all managed to keep. Gilbert is on the right in his international flag gown. Anyway… In 1970, a self-described “geeky kid from Kansas” named Gilbert Baker came to San Francisco as an Army draftee. After an honorable discharge, he stayed in San Francisco, free to pursue his dreams of being an artist. He learned to sew, making all the fabulous 70s clothes that he wanted but couldn’t buy. In 1974, Baker’s life changed forever when he met Harvey Milk, who showed him “how action could create change.” Three years after they met, Milk was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Milk,