After towns reject flag requests, advocates put signs of Pride in storefronts

Supporters of the Pride flag flying outside suburban village halls are still lobbying mayors and trustees to raise the rainbow colors, but local businesses, community groups, churches and residents have taken up the banner in the meantime.

More than 50 shop owners in downtown Arlington Heights have agreed to display window clings featuring a rainbow-colored Heights Pride infinity logo, and signed a pledge to provide a welcoming and safe environment for customers and avoid discrimination.

About 100 related lawn signs are also in front of houses where supporters have made a $15 donation.

It’s an advocacy effort led by Glen’s Friends, an Arlington Heights-based 501(c) (3) nonprofit that supports the LGBTQIA+ community.

Months before June and Pride Month, organization founder and president Janet McCarthy started going door to door to businesses in the village’s downtown to ask for support of the group’s inclusion campaign.

It was just months after a political defeat for McCarthy and other advocates at village hall, where board members narrowly decided to reject calls to hoist the Pride flag on a village flagpole on Sigwalt Street.

“It was our plan B,” McCarthy said. “We felt we needed something visible in town that felt welcoming and inclusive and safe, and actually, in a way, this is even more affirming when it’s right on the front of a business.”

She only got a few “nos” from business owners, mostly because a store might be corporate owned.

“We thought this is perfect timing. We just missed that vote by one,” McCarthy said of the 5-4 village board tally last August. “Let’s give this a try, and we were thrilled with the response.”

The inspiration was a similar program in downtown Elmhurst led by the Elmhurst Pride Collective, which coordinates Pride-themed displays and banners in storefront windows every summer.

McCarthy and her six other nonprofit board members have likewise made connections with progressive groups in other towns — particularly where local boards have similarly rejected demands to fly the Pride flag on public property.

Glen’s Friends donated 200 signs — labeled “Palatine Pride” — for supporters in that town, where debate continues to rage over flying the flag at village hall.

Proponents have continued to show up to village council meetings in recent weeks, arguing that the flags would send a prominent message of inclusion. Opponents contend municipalities like Palatine should remain nonpartisan and limit their displays to government flags such as the U.S. and state flags.

McCarthy has talked with like-minded folks in Mount Prospect and Barrington, where local officials have also rejected calls to display the flag in recent years.

“Our dream at Glen’s Friends is to fill the Northwest Highway corridor — each town, with their own Pride, from us,” she said. “We are stronger together.”

The namesake of the organization is McCarthy’s brother, Glen Brown, a 57-year-old Arlington Heights resident who died in a crash during a 2022 AIDS charity bike ride in California. She launched the organization a year later to carry on his legacy and the causes dear to him.

Brown was an accomplished clarinetist and drum major in the Arlington High School marching band. He was part of the Class of 1982 — one of the last classes at the school that closed in 1984.

But it wasn’t until after college that Brown came out, his sister said, and even then, the only places he felt comfortable hanging out were bars in Chicago.

Michael Brown — no relation — the owner of CoCo & Blu and CoCo & Maple coffee shops in downtown Arlington Heights and Mount Prospect, respectively, said he knows many people who can sympathize with that story.

That’s why he says everyone is welcome at his businesses, where about half the staff is gay, and it’s common to see couples on their first dates.

The signs of Pride at CoCo & Blu — the window clings, a flag behind the counter, buttons on a plush toy — would have been welcome in the suburbs a decade ago, Brown believes.

“But it feels like now there’s more of a need for it,” he said.

McCarthy hopes visibility of the movement in Arlington Heights shops and on lawns across town will put pressure on elected officials. She says efforts to change the village’s flag policy will continue.

“We’re not done,” she said. “If we have over 50 businesses right here in downtown that have said yes to this, and they embrace it, how can you look away from that? So we’re hopeful. And there’s elections coming up.”