By David Tyler

Last week, following a proclamation unanimously supported by the town board, the town of Manlius raised the Philadelphia Pride flag over town hall as a symbol of the town’s support of the LGTBQIA community.
The flag was raised during a brief ceremony held Thursday morning and will be raised again for the month June in subsequent years.
On Wednesday night, Councilor Heather Waters read the proclamation and made a statement in support on behalf of “the people that I grew up with who didn’t feel as though they got signs from our town that they belonged here.”
“This resolution gets us further and closer to bridging that gap,” Waters said.
Kate de la Garza lives in Fayetteville with her wife Marisa and their two children, Camila and Drea. On Wednesday, she spoke via Zoom of the challenges she and her family face being one of very few families in the area with same-sex parents. A few years ago, the couple moved from Seattle to town of Manlius, where Marisa is from, and the change from urban setting with a large LGBTQIA community to the suburban Syracuse community has come with some culture shock.
“I just want to say thank you to Heather and to the town for even considering this resolution,” she said. “It’s hard to feel that you belong here, sometimes, when you’re in such a minority. This kind of action makes a really big difference for folks like us.”
On Thursday, the de la Garzas were at the ceremony at Manlius Town Hall and Camila and Drea helped Manlius Supervisor Ed Theobald raise the Pride flag on the town hall flagpole.
“You are more than welcome in our community,” Theobald said.
For this year, the Pride flag will fly under the American flag on the town’s sole flagpole on the south side of the town hall property. Theobald said the town is in the process of ordering and installing a new flagpole on the north side of town hall so that in the future, the town will be in line with traditional American flag etiquette.