It’s Pride Month! In 1978, Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man to win elected office in the United States, urged the artist Gilbert Baker to create a flag that would celebrate the diversity of the LGBT community. (If Milk’s name rings a bell at the moment, it may be because in a viciously reactionary but hardly surprising development, the Trump administration has moved to strip his name from the US naval ship Harvey Milk, bestowed in honor of the Navy veteran and San Francisco politician who was assassinated in 1978.) The rainbow flag had humble beginnings: Thirty volunteers helped Baker hand-dye and stitch the first two in the top-floor attic gallery of the Gay Community Center in San Francisco. The design has undergone several revisions since, but the most common version is composed of six stripes, with the colors red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet.
Which brings us to the exquisite rainbow-hued jewelry we feature here. You might think that wearing multicolored baubles is a trivial way to commemorate a historic human rights struggle, but think about it—maybe your watermelon tourmaline ring or dazzling dripping earrings will provoke a conversation about the Stonewall uprising, that night 56 years ago that gave birth to the modern LGBTQ+ movement?
Here is how the eminent author Edmund White, who passed away earlier this month, described the Stonewall rebellion: “Up till that moment we had all thought that homosexuality was a medical term. Suddenly we saw that we could be a minority group—with rights, a culture, an agenda.” Rights, a culture, an agenda—what could be more important this year than fighting fiercely to defend and extend those freedoms?
Among our suggestions this month, we feature Eden Presley’s Believe in Love pendant—a flying piggy with pavé rainbow sapphire wings. Before Stonewall, the idea that a gay rights movement could even exist—let alone flourish—was as likely as an airborne porker. But as Representative Sarah McBride, the first trans member of Congress has observed, “Change always seems impossible until it’s inevitable.” Happy Pride.