Agate Housing and Services states that they stand for Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion. Our organization had a booth at this years Pride event. It is against shelter policy for clients to use homophobic or hateful language. However, when shelter employees came together and decided to purchase a pride flag to hang in the office, management told employees to take it down on multiple occasions, and were told a Pride Flag could "Trigger Clients".
Employees do not accept this language. While staff at the shelter care deeply for our residents, if anybody, staff or resident feels uncomfortable with a pride flag, that is not a trigger. It is a bias, implicit or explicit. Agate leadership should not be making decisions to cater to people who are not accepting of marginalized communities, including our many LGBTQ staff and clients.

Sign our petition now to tell Shelter leadership to allow the pride flag to fly, and allow shelter residents and workers alike that they are accepted here.