28 | QSALTLAKE MAGAZINE | FEATURE
Qsaltlake.com | ISSUE 316 | OCTOBER, 2020
Project Rainbow brings LGBTQ Pride and love statewide
BY MICHAEL AARON
“The Boy Scouts
came up with the idea, I just made it more colorful,” Lucas Horns once said to QSaltLake Magazine when he first brought his brainchild to fruition. “I love the sense of community and camaraderie in the Boy Scouts when they put their flags out. I knew the same rallying could happen with the LGBT community.” Started three years ago with about 500 flags staked in donors’ yards as a celebration of Utah Pride, Project Rainbow has since blossomed, reaching all corners of the state and expanded to transgender awareness as well. Project Rainbow is a group of volunteers that takes orders for rainbow flags to be staked in residential yards and front of businesses. Apartment dwellers may have a flag as well to put in their winPHOTO: HARRISON SPENDLOVE
dows. They are then gathered up and used for the next LGBTQ event. Proceeds from the $15 fee are donated to the local Pride or transgender charity. The group made an additional 3,000 flags in September, all of which have been reserved for Salt Lake City area yards. On the last two weekends of September, they drove down to St. George, Utah to stake flags in the southern part of the state. This basically replaced Southern Utah Pride, which was canceled because of a spike in Coronavirus cases in the region. Flags will also be staked in Utah County the weekend of Sept. 26–27 in celebration of the Provo Pride Motorcade. (See the Qmmunity page for information.) Transgender flags were staked in August for Utah Transgender Pride and will be once again for Transgender Day of Remembrance in November.
Through the year, organizers say they will likely stake over 4,000 flags. “We’ll raise over $50,000 this year to be distributed to various non-profits like Utah Pride Center, Logan Pride, etc.” Horns said. “Last year we raised a little over $30,000 and the first year it was just shy of $8,000.” And it takes a village to make it happen. “I assume we have about 60 volunteers,” organizer and volunteer extraordinaire Dallas Rivas said. “We took about 16 to 18 hours over three days to make the new flags, plus about six hours of preparation the day before to gather supplies at Home Depot and load them into a trailer.” “Dallas especially has put in more work to Project Rainbow than anyone. It would not function without him,” said Horns.
