East Bay Catholic High School Removes and Replaces Pride Flag With New Symbol
A Catholic high school in the East Bay removed pride flags ahead of students’ return to campus this week, replacing them with a new symbol that it said affirms the LGBTQ+ community.
In a letter to families last week, Bishop O’Dowd High School President Kim Walsh said the school would introduce the “Inclusive O,” a blocky letter washed in rainbow pride colors, after the classic flags became a “lightning rod” on campus last year.
Walsh wrote that the new “O” will be displayed across the Oakland Hills campus and is meant to “affirm that our LGBTQ+ students, families, faculty, and staff are seen, known, loved, and belong here.”
The Diocese of Oakland asked the school to remove the pride flags after someone in the community saw a “progress” flag — which includes the traditional six pride colors, plus a chevron-shaped overlay to the left side in the transgender pride colors, and black and brown — on campus and reported it to Oakland Archbishop Michael Barber.
The school did not immediately comply with the order, but removed flags just before summer break, featuring them in a ceremony in the school’s chapel and replacing them with posters and shirts featuring the “Inclusive O.”
Walsh wrote that developing the alternative symbol was a “yearlong process,” during which school leaders “engaged faculty and staff, counselors, parents, the Board of Regents, LGBTQ+ community members, and student leaders” to ask “How do we continue to visibly communicate that every student belongs?”
She said that in recent years, the Catholic Church across the U.S. has begun discussing the flags.
In 2023, Barber and Archbishop of San Francisco Salvatore Cordileone issued a joint letter on gender ideology, saying that it “denies certain fundamental aspects of human existence,” including the differences between men and women, and is, as a concept, “opposed to reason, to science, and to a Christian view of the human person.”
Walsh wrote that the “Inclusive O,” introduced to students at orientation on Thursday, expresses unwavering commitment to LGBTQ+ members of O’Dowd’s community, which has included openly gay educators for decades, according to previous reporting by The Oaklandside.
A spokesperson for the school said it has had a unity club for queer students for more than a decade and hosts an annual family day for LGBTQ+ families.
Still, alumni who created a social media profile opposed to the decision said replacing the traditional flags “directly affects the LGBTQ+ population of the school by removing pieces of representation.”