this is what progress looks like.
Batavia hosted a massive crowd for its Pride flag raising this week. Here’s what I had to say as the city made history again.
Queering the Burbs is a regularly-published distillation of pop culture, politics and queerness written by Joe Erbentraut. If you like what you see, please consider subscribing (it’s free!), liking or sharing this piece.
It’s incredible how fast times can change, even in a small town like Batavia, Illinois. Just three years ago, I wrote in this newsletter about the city’s very first official Pride Month proclamation. That proclamation was accompanied by the raising, for the very first time, of a Pride flag outside City Hall.
Every year since that day in June 2021, a Pride flag has flown outside Batavia’s City Hall in honor of Pride Month. The occasion has, if we’re being honest, gone by with little fanfare as typically a crowd of no more than a couple dozen or so onlookers have typically assembled to watch the rainbow stripes be hoisted up the city pole.
Something changed last year. That’s when a pair of Batavia residents showed up to the City Council meeting following the Pride flag raising ceremony to ask why the city dared to raise a flag celebrating, in their verbatim words, “bedroom behavior.” Their vile words caught people like me off guard on what should have been a joyful day.
This year, Batavia’s queer community feared that we’d be in for a repeat of last year’s protest—or something worse. That’s why the call went out—for Batavians and area residents of all backgrounds to gather and show support for everything Daniel Quasar’s Progress Pride flag stands for.
That call was received enthusiastically, as a crowd of more than 100 people—the biggest crowd yet—gathered for Batavia’s Pride flag raising, even despite the threat of storms earlier in the day.
I was truly honored to be personally invited by city officials to speak at the event on Monday night. As I looked out at the crowd—of beloved friends, family members, advocates, and strangers—I genuinely felt more proud of my hometown than I ever had before. When Alderman Dan Chanzit invited kids in attendance to help with the flag raising, my eyes welled up behind my sunglasses as more than a dozen kids, including my nephew, ran up to take part in the festivities. The moment was like a Hallmark movie truly brought to real life. It proved what this city is really made of.
I’ve included the speech I delivered, in full, below. Happy Pride, folks.
I am so honored to speak here today to help commemorate the official raising of the Pride flag here in Batavia for Pride Month.
When I first moved to this town with my now-husband Stefin in 2016, I never would have predicted that Batavia would be the sort of place that would recognize Pride Month in any capacity, much less raising a Pride flag and issuing a Pride Month proclamation as is being done today. When you are growing up gay, you learn very quickly where you belong and where you don’t. The story we are taught—both implicitly and explicitly—by the world around us is that queer people live in large cities like Chicago or New York, and that those of us growing up in a rural or suburban setting, like Batavia, need to get ourselves to an urban environment as quickly as possible. In the eyes of so many, it’s where we “belong.”
This isn’t just a matter of preference. For so many of us in LGBT+ communities, this is first and foremost a matter of personal safety. As the cliche goes, there is strength in numbers. There is strength in community, and strength in family. For many of us, the family that raised us from birth aren’t the people who make us feel safe and supported. Instead, it is our chosen family, rooted in our queer community, that is there for us. It is this chosen family that keeps us alive, and in many cases, our chosen family members are found in cities, where queer people enjoy many more opportunities to gather and meet in public places.
But queer people are everywhere—and we belong everywhere. The queer community is not a monolith, and not everyone wants to live in a city. When I first moved here, I could count the other queer people I knew on just two fingers. Driving around town, it was incredibly rare to see Pride flags like the one we are raising today or the one we have on display at our home. Though we quickly fell in love with our new hometown, it was an isolating experience to feel so alone. In those early years here, our Pride flag was stolen and hate mail was received. Though we quickly made some wonderful friends, we still didn’t always feel like we belonged here. On some days, we wondered what we were doing here in Batavia at all.
In 2020, during the peak of the pandemic, I launched a newsletter called Queering the Burbs, which I continue to publish to this day. The newsletter explores those feelings of isolation and otherness, as well as the signs of progress in our town. Over the years, the newsletter has featured the perspectives of so many individuals who are changemakers both here in Batavia and in the broader Fox Valley, and I’m so indebted to their work and advocacy. These people include Annie Hex, whose Queer Proms, Pink Room and many other events and initiatives have created incredibly powerful spaces for queer joy in a place where nothing like that previously existed. Those people also include Scott Naylor, whose queer advocacy through Belong: Fox Valley has continued to move the needle in this town toward acceptance and equity. Alderman Dan Chanzit is our community’s voice on the council and his tenacity has helped make Batavia a more welcoming place for everyone, and Kathleen Tieri Ton’s work at the high school has fostered a haven of safety and creativity for kids who are queer, questioning, and just don’t feel like they fit anywhere else.
Annie, Scott, Dan, and Kathleen are just four examples of the many incredible individuals here in town who are working every day to make this town a safer place for queer people to grow up in and call home. And there are so many dozens of others I can’t even begin to name. This advocacy is not always easy, and could not be more needed right now. Last year, a record number of anti-LGBTQ bills—over 500 in total—were introduced in states across the country. These bills pushed to erase LGBTQ+ inclusive curriculum from schools and to force the outing of queer kids, among many other things.
At a local level, we have also seen a more subtle but equally chilling pushback on LGBTQ+ rights and lives. In our school district, students complain about an onslaught of homophobic, transphobic, and racist bullying and harassment that is not always taken seriously by school officials. Our local Target over on Randall Road eliminated its Pride Month display this year. And queer people in this town continue to see Pride flags and signs stolen or defaced right where they live and sleep. We as queer people in this town are constantly told to be quiet, to take up less space, to take what is given to us and not dare to ask for more. We’re told not to question community leaders, to be acceptable and to blend in. This is not what progress looks like.
So, what does progress look like? What we’re gathered here to do tonight is an example. Technically speaking, of course, the flag is just a piece of fabric and a proclamation is simply a piece of paper. But really it is so much more than that. Actions from the city to raise this Pride flag and issue a Pride Month proclamation today send a strong message not only to those of us who live here, but also to those of us looking for their new home. It tells us that we are welcomed here. That our right to exist and prosper, to grow up and grow old, to start businesses and grow families while being our full selves is acknowledged and appreciated here.
These actions also send a message to those who live here who do not see queer people like me and my chosen family as equals. Those individuals who do not want to see our humanity validated. Those individuals who direct their fear and insecurity directly onto the backs of queer kids, trans people, and other lesbian and gay folks. That message to those individuals, to me, is: Sorry, folks, Batavia is not a city that caves to bigoted threats. Batavia is not a city that stands on the side of hate, on the side of fear and the side of inequality. Batavia is a city that is better than that. Batavia is a city that is queer, and proud of it. Batavia is a city that is trans, and proud of it. Batavia is a city that is different, and proud of it. Batavia is a city founded by abolitionists. Batavia is a city of peace. Batavia is a city calling for a ceasefire. Batavia is a city where everyone belongs.
I’m so proud to call Batavia home every day, but especially on a day like today. I hope to see the city of Batavia and its leaders continue to formally recognize Pride Month and our queer community in the years ahead. I am confident that it will. Because we are out here. We’re your children and grandchildren, your neighbors and your friends, your constituents and your teachers, your firefighters and your elected leaders, your students and your customers, your tarot readers and your tattoo artists. We are your future. And we. Are not. Going. Anywhere. Thank you.
