NUMISMATIC COMMEMORATIONS OF PRIDE

Numismatic commemorations of Pride and the challenges historically experienced by LGBTQIA+ community are, however, remarkably lacking. In fact, the first (and only) circulating coin to recognize the tribulations of the LGBTQIA+ community and its advances towards equality was struck in Canada in 2019. The one-dollar coin, sometimes referred to as the gay loonie, depicts two intertwined faces and the phrases EQUALITY and ÉGALITÉ. While the Royal Canadian Mint sold colorized variations and proofs of this coin directly to collectors, three million were struck for general circulation. The coins marked 50 years since Canada's partial decriminalization of homosexuality and referred to the LGBTQ2 movement; in Canada the 2 in LGBTQ2 refers to the two-spirit concept among native peoples, of having both masculine and feminine qualities, which some indigenous people in Canada have deployed as a means of describing their own gender identities. While many welcomed the gay loonie, it was also criticized by some as suggesting that the work for LGBTQIA+ equality is complete; some conservative religious groups were offended that the LGBTQIA+ community was recognized on official currency.

In May 2022, it was announced that the UK's Royal Mint was releasing a 50p Pride coin, marking 50 years since the UK's first pride protest in London in 1972 (Fig. 3). The colorized coin features four rainbows with the words PROTEST, UNITY, VISIBILITY, and EQUALITY superimposed on them, surrounding a fifth central rainbow with the word PRIDE on it. While the rainbows exhibit colors from the original gay-pride flag adopted in 1978, the lower element of the coin displays four chevrons of black, brown, light blue, and pink, which derive from the more recent progress-pride flag that directly recognizes people of color and the transgender community (on the forms of the pride flag, see here). Unlike the Canadian dollar that entered circulation in 2019 (and that to my knowledge remains the only circulating coin with such content), the new design on the UK's 50p coins is only available by direct sales and will not enter circulation.

While the challenges and accomplishments of the LGBTQIA+ community generally remain unmarked on the circulating coinage of Europe and North America, and LGBTQIA+ people still endeavor for social equality and legal rights and protections, there should be no doubt as to their economic impact (pink money) and broader contributions to society and culture. In Chicago in the 1980s, when a city ordinance guaranteeing equal rights for the gay community failed, the local gay community began stamping paper money with Gay $ in red to communicate their economic presence and power, despite the fact that many would have preferred them to remain quiet and invisible. The collection of the Coin Room of the Ashmolean Museum, which also provides a helpful summary, contains similar objects pertaining to historical LGBTQIA+ activism through the marking of paper currency, including a rubber stamp used to mark bills with the phrase QUEER CASH and a U.S. fifty-dollar bill stamped Lesbian Money in purple on its reverse.

 

The stamping of paper currency is not just a relic of activism of the 1980s and 1990s, but continues to this day. The most recent and noteworthy examples are the stamps of Harriet Tubman's face that Americans are placing on circulating twenty-dollar bills over Andrew Jackson's face (Fig. 5) after a plan to replace Jackson with Tubman as part of a new design by 2020 was scrapped by the new federal administration after the 2016 election.

To read the complete article, see:
The LGBTQIA+ Community and Numismatic (In)visibility (https://numismatics.org/pocketchange/lgbtqia/)

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:
ROYAL MINT'S RAINBOW 50P PRIDE COIN (https://www.coinbooks.org/v25/esylum_v25n23a28.html)

	NBS (coinbooks.org) Web