Sego Belonging Flag

Overview

Salt Lake City adopted the Sego Belonging Flag as one of four official city flags on 6 May 2025. Its field follows the Progress Pride Flag, with six rainbow stripes crossed by a white, pink, light-blue, brown, and black chevron. A white sego lily with a golden stamen, derived from the city's 2020 flag, appears in the upper hoist. The ordinance connects these elements with LGBTQIA belonging, support for transgender residents and marginalized racial and ethnic communities, forward progress, resilience, and future growth. ^[1]

The adoption occurred one day before Utah House Bill 77 took effect, restricting the flags government entities could display while exempting municipal flags. The council approved the ordinance 7-0. ^{[2] [3]} Salt Lake City proposed and adopted the composite, but the reviewed records do not name its individual designer. Daniel Quasar and the 2020 Sego Flag's designers should be credited for the source designs, not for the composite itself. ^[6]

Identity & Context

Represented Identity

LGBTQIA residents of Salt Lake City

National Context

United States; Salt Lake City

The ordinance states that the flag's stripes represent "the City's affirmation of the rainbow as a symbol of beauty and diversity in the City, the City's support and acceptance of the LGBTQIA community, and as a symbol of the LGBTQIA community's belonging in the City", and assigns the chevron to the transgender community and to "members of marginalized racial and ethnic communities". ^[1] Throughout, this is a city speaking about its residents rather than a community speaking for itself.

Creators

Origin

Country

United States

Region / state

Utah

City

Salt Lake City

Specific Place

Salt Lake City and County Building, 451 South State Street

Place Type

Municipal adoption

Salt Lake City stands on the traditional and ancestral homelands of the Shoshone, Paiute, Goshute, and Ute peoples. ^[9] This note identifies the location of municipal adoption and does not attribute the Sego designs to those nations.

Indigenous land context

Shoshone — traditional and ancestral homelands of the Salt Lake Valley. The University of Utah's land acknowledgment records that the Salt Lake Valley "is the traditional and ancestral homelands of the Shoshone, Paiute, Goshute, and Ute Tribes and is a crossroad for Indigenous peoples", and that the land is named for the Ute Tribe. ^[9]

Paiute

Goshute

Ute

Salt Lake City is the documented place of municipal adoption: the City Council passed Ordinance 25 of 2025 at the Salt Lake City and County Building, 451 South State Street. ^{[2] [1]} The reviewed sources do not identify where the composites were drawn.

Dates & Chronology

Year Created

2025

Adopted by ordinance

May 6, 2025

In use

2025 to the present, as one of four Salt Lake City flags

Creation Bounds

Official sources first document the Sego composite in 2025, when the Salt Lake City Council adopted it on 6 May in the meeting that passed Ordinance 25 of 2025. ^[2] The mayor's office states that versions of the three underlying flag traditions "have been consistently displayed at City Hall during Mayor Mendenhall's time in office"; that is evidence of prior display of Pride, transgender and Juneteenth flags, not a date for the lily-bearing composite. ^[7] The Wikimedia Commons redraw is dated 6 May 2025, which dates that file. ^[8]

The council took the ordinance as new business, suspending the rules to consider motions, with no public hearing set. Chris Wharton moved to adopt, Alejandro Puy seconded, and it passed 7 to 0: Victoria Petro, Daniel Dugan, Chris Wharton, Alejandro Puy, Darin Mano, Sarah Young and Eva Lopez Chavez all voting aye. ^[2]

Associated Press photography published by KUER documents the newly adopted city flags displayed at the Salt Lake City and County Building on 7 May 2025. ^[10] Salt Lake City has since flown the flag at City Hall, and Project Rainbow Utah manufactures and sells it as a 3 by 5 foot polyester flag, describing it as "an homage to the Progress Pride Flag". ^[5]

Utah House Bill 77, Flag Display Amendments, bars a government entity from displaying a flag on government property outside an exempt list, and bars displaying an exempt flag "with alterations in color, symbols, or appearance". Among the exemptions is "a flag that represents a city, municipality, county, or political subdivision of the state". The state auditor investigates complaints and may fine an entity $500 per violation per day if it does not cure within 30 days. The bill takes effect on 7 May 2025. ^[3] The enacted law does not name Pride, transgender or Juneteenth flags; news coverage and the bill's opponents described it in those terms, and Salt Lake City adopted its designs as city flags the day before it took effect. ^{[7] [1]}

The ordinance enacts a new chapter 1.09 of the Salt Lake City Code, City Flags, which defines a flag as "a depiction or emblem made from fabric or cloth with a specific design" and excludes depictions made from lights, paint, roofing, siding, paving materials, flora, balloons "or any other building, landscaping, or decorative component other than fabric or cloth". It states that the four city flags "equally represent the City". ^[1]

The sego lily in the upper hoist canton is the emblem of Salt Lake City's 2020 flag. The city opened a public call for submissions in spring 2020, received more than 600 entries, and narrowed them to eight for public rating and then to two finalists: a honeybee over a honeycomb, and a sego lily on a deep blue triangle under sky blue. The adopted flag merged the two, pairing the blue and white field with the lily. Its designers were Arianna Meinking, then 18 and recently graduated from West High School, and Elio Kennedy-Yoon, then 17 and a senior there. The mayor's letter announcing the flag is dated October 2020. ^[6] The Sego Flag Design Committee included Ted Kaye of the North American Vexillological Association, author of Good Flag, Bad Flag, and John Hartvigsen, that association's president from 2014 to 2017. ^[6]

Lineage

Direct predecessors

Progress Pride Flag

Companion flags

Sego Celebration Flag, Sego Visibility Flag

Sibling flags

Indigiqueer / Two-Spirit Flag (cedar-maw), Intersex-Inclusive Pride Flag, Jewish Progress Pride Flag (Keshet), Two-Spirit Progress Pride Flag, Inclusive Diversity Pride Flag (TransIphis, 2022), Utopian Pride Flag #6 (2040 Progress Flag)

Two designs meet in this flag. The stripes and chevron are the Progress Pride Flag's, published by Daniel Quasar in 2018; the ordinance describes the chevron without naming a source, and no city document credits Quasar. ^[1] The sego lily is the emblem of the city's own 2020 flag. ^[6] The Wikimedia Commons redraw states that it was made "using elements from Flag of Salt Lake City (2020).svg and File:LGBTQ+ rainbow flag Quasar 'Progress' variant.svg", which records how that file was built rather than how the city designed the flag. ^[8]

Ordinance 25 of 2025 adopted this design alongside the Sego Visibility and Sego Celebration flags, which share the same lily. They are companions adopted in one instrument, not siblings: the archive reserves that term for flags sharing a documented parent. ^[1]

Lineage tree

Every record reachable from this one through documented parent and child relationships: 7 records across 6 generations.

Ancestors -5

Original Rainbow Flag (1978)

Ancestors -4

Seven-Stripe Rainbow Flag (1978)

Ancestors -3

Rainbow Pride Flag

Ancestors -2

Transgender Pride Flag, Philadelphia Pride Flag

Ancestor

Progress Pride Flag

This record

Sego Belonging Flag

Colors & Symbolism

The ordinance assigns a meaning to every element of the flag, and states that all four city flags "equally represent the City and its character, ingenuity, perseverance, and norms in different ways". ^[1]

Sampled from the city's published artwork. ^[4]

The six rainbow stripes

"The City's affirmation of the rainbow as a symbol of beauty and diversity in the City, the City's support and acceptance of the LGBTQIA community, and as a symbol of the LGBTQIA community's belonging in the City." ^[1]

The white, pink and light blue of the chevron

"The City's support and acceptance of the transgender community and as a symbol of the transgender community's belonging in the City." ^[1]

The brown and black of the chevron

"The City's support and acceptance of members of marginalized racial and ethnic communities and as a symbol of their belonging in the City." ^[1]

The chevron pointing to the right

"The forward progress made toward embracing all residents of, and visitors to, Salt Lake City and that continued progress should be pursued." ^[1]

The sego lily

A flower that "has grown in the Salt Lake Valley for millennia", representing "the resilience, acceptance, and belonging that exemplifies Salt Lake City and its residents". The ordinance gives the same sentence to all four city flags. ^[1]

The golden stamen

"The future growth that comes with each succeeding generation." ^[1]

These meanings are the ordinance's, adopted in law. The city's flag page gives a shorter account, describing the rainbow as representing "beauty and diversity of the community" and the chevron as "the arrow of black, brown, light blue, pink, and white, which represents marginalized communities and forward progress". ^[6] Neither document carries a meaning across from the Progress Pride Flag it draws the chevron from, and neither names that flag.

The ordinance names the colours in words and publishes no numeric values. ^[1] The values above are measurements from the city's published artwork, which is a JPEG, not an official digital specification. ^[4] The stamen samples #FEB415 in all three 2025 artworks, drawn at the same size in the Belonging and Visibility files and smaller in the Celebration file.

A Wikimedia Commons redraw of this flag circulates with a different palette and proportion. Its stripes sample #E40303, #FF9918, #FBF000, #008A40, #2049AB and #890084, the Quasar Progress variant's values, which the Commons file states it drew from, and it is 1280 by 813 rather than the city's 1500 by 903. Every stripe differs from the city's, the green and blue substantially. ^[8]

Design

Aspect Ratio

3:5 · standard

Ratio Notes

The ordinance specifies no proportion. Salt Lake City's published artwork is 1500 by 903 pixels, which is close to 3:5 without being exactly it. The archive records 3:5 as a standardized production ratio rather than an ordinance-specified measurement; Project Rainbow Utah manufactures the Sego flags at 3 by 5 feet. ^{[4] [5]}

Orientation

horizontal

Stripe Count

6

Layout

horizontal stripes with a hoist chevron and a canton emblem

Stripes (Top → Bottom)

red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple

Additional Symbols

A five-coloured triangular chevron on the hoist pointing right: a white triangle outlined by pink, light blue, brown and black, A white three-petal sego lily with a six-prong golden stamen in the upper hoist canton

The ordinance specifies the design clause by clause: six horizontal stripes, "a red stripe, orange stripe, yellow stripe, green stripe, blue stripe, and purple stripe", in that order from the top; "a five colored triangular chevron that overlaps the horizontal stripes on the hoist side of the flag pointing to the right. The chevron starts with a white triangle outlined by pink, light blue, brown, and black in that order"; and "a white three petal sego lily with a six prong golden stamen is located in the upper hoist canton". ^[1] The design image incorporated in the ordinance matches the composition the city publishes. ^{[1] [4]}

Measurement of the city's artwork agrees. The six stripes are of equal depth. The lily sits in the upper hoist, its stamen spanning 25 to 32 per cent of the width and 19 to 32 per cent of the depth, well above the chevron's point at mid-height, and the blossom overlaps the chevron's upper arms and the red stripe behind them. ^[4]

The ordinance names the chevron's colours from the inside out, "a white triangle outlined by pink, light blue, brown, and black in that order", so the black band lies against the stripes and the white lies at the hoist. ^[1]

Six horizontal stripes, red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple, with a five-coloured chevron at the hoist pointing right and a white sego lily with a golden stamen in the upper hoist canton.

Usage & Adoption

Organizations

Salt Lake City, Project Rainbow Utah

Geographic Usage

Salt Lake City, Utah

Current Status

In use as one of four Salt Lake City flags

The ordinance leaves the choice of which flag to fly to the mayor: "The Mayor or their designee shall determine which City Flag or Flags to display at a given time. Such displays may include educational, cultural, or historical observances that celebrate diversity, recognize historical contributions, or promote awareness without engaging in exclusion or discrimination." When more than one flag flies on a pole the order from the top is the United States flag, the Utah state flag, then a city flag. ^[1]

Associated Press photography published by KUER documents the newly adopted city flags displayed at the Salt Lake City and County Building on 7 May 2025. ^[10] Project Rainbow Utah, a Utah non-profit, produces the flag in polyester at 3 by 5 feet with reinforced edges and grommets, which documents physical manufacture and community circulation. ^[5]

Image Archive

Official City Artwork

Discourse & Debates

Criticisms

• Utah Governor Spencer Cox criticised the city's flags after the June 2025 Juneteenth raising: "They're dumb flags, and it was a dumb bill," he said, adding that other groups were left out and "I'm sure they feel great that they got around this dumb law, and they did it with dumb flags." ^[11]

Community reception

Two residents spoke to the flags in the meeting's public comment period. The minutes record that Randell Hoffman "spoke in support of the proposed City flag designs and the long history of the LGBTQIA+ community in Salt Lake City", and that Betty Sawyer, director of the Utah Juneteenth Freedom & Heritage Festival, spoke in support of the flag honouring Juneteenth. No comment against the flags is recorded.

The council members' remarks are summarised in the minutes rather than quoted. Chris Wharton "spoke to the meaning of each color of the Pride Flag, representing shared humanity and shared ideals of freedom, perseverance, and love"; Darin Mano said the flags "were meaningful to him and his family and was an important and critical symbol for the people of the City to feel safe"; Sarah Young described them as "an act of love, consideration, and welcoming for all City residents". ^[2]

The city uses LGBTQIA in the ordinance and in its announcement, and that is the term reproduced here when quoting them. ^[1][7]

Footnotes & Citations

Image Sources

Rendering

The city's published artwork

• The city's own published rendering of the flag it adopted. ^[4] · Credit: Salt Lake City Corporation · SLC.gov · 1500 × 903Rights Published by Salt Lake City for download. The city states no licence beyond saying the design "is approved for creating flags and designs".
• Salt Lake City's published artwork for the Sego Belonging Flag, 1500 by 903 pixels, the file the city offers for download and the source of this entry's colour and geometry measurements. ^[4] · Credit: Salt Lake City Corporation · SLC.govRights Published by Salt Lake City for download; the city states no licence beyond saying the design is approved for creating flags and designs. The archive's WebP is a conversion of that file.