Mixed Responses to Catholic School’s Inclusive ‘O’

Reactions to a Catholic high school’s attempt to make its queer students feel less alienated while also avoiding controversy  have garnered mixed reactions from alumni, parents, clergy, and one Catholic LGBTQ+ leader, according to the San Francisco Chronicle

After the staff at Bishop O’Dowd High School in Oakland, California removed Pride flags from their classrooms last school year, students and staff banded together to find an alternative that would make LGBTQ+ students feel included and welcomed. They settled on filling  the school’s logo with rainbow colors reminiscent of the Pride flag. They dubbed the image the “Inclusive O,” standing for O’Dowd.  While some praised the move as an effective compromise and an example to other Catholic high schools around the country, others saw it as regressive. 

“To have an organization that has said, ‘ We care about you. We see you. We support you,’ to then take that away, in many ways, it hurts more than an organization that has always said, ‘No, you are not accepted here,” says Rick Oculto, an LGBTQ+ advocate in the Bay Area, in an interview with The Oaklandside. “ It’s deeply hurtful, and it feels like they are pandering to the aspects of Christianity that we left a long time ago.”

However, In another interview with ABC-7, Mujinga Mwamufiya, whose child attends O’Dowd and “identifies with the Pride flag,” said her child “didn’t think the removal of the flag represented O’Dowd.” She says they “know what O’Dowd is about,” and “know that it is an inclusive school and they feel welcome there.” 

According to an earlier report from KQED, the decision to remove the Pride flags came from the Diocese of Oakland, not school officials. KQED’s report said the school only did so reluctantly:

“The school did not immediately comply with the order, but removed flags just before summer break, featuring them in a ceremony in the school’s chapel and replacing them with posters and shirts featuring the ‘Inclusive O.’”

Many O’Dowd alums have expressed dismay with the removal of the Pride flags, some of which had been hanging in classrooms for 30 years they say. An O’Dowd alum named Dani Clement posted on Instagram that they were “ashamed” of the flags’ removal. Another LGBTQ+ O’Dowd alum posted on Instagram to say the school was shying away from “true inclusion.” She goes on:

“Bring back the O’Dowd that found ways to stand by its LGBTQ community in the face of criticism, that proudly put on The Laramie Project in the early 2000’s. Removing the flag so many look to as a sign of belonging and support from their community to replace it with a less public logo that you’ll display somewhere inside a private building is not only cowardly but enables dangerous discourse to continue.”

While some in O’Dowd’s community did not feel wholly represented by the Inclusive O, others around the country see it as a meaningful step forward for Catholic schools. Melanie Willingham-Jaggers, the CEO of GLSTEN, an organization focused on making schools safe and welcoming for LGBTQ+ students, expressed tentative support for the symbol. While “ideally, schools wouldn’t ban the Pride flag and other symbols of support,” any attempt “to acknowledge LGBTQ+ people, and young people in particular, is welcome.” She elaborates:

“Although this is most likely not the first time this has happened, we haven’t heard too many instances of schools, especially religious ones, going out of their way to find ways to support their LGBTQ+ students.”

New Ways Ministry’s Executive Director  Francis DeBernardo said the Inclusive O was a “creative solution” to a problem that has vexed Catholic schools around the country:

“Catholic high schools want to affirm their LGBTQ students and faculty, but some people see the Pride flag as a political symbol, and so I think this [the Inclusive O] does the trick of finding a happy medium by using the rainbow colors in a different formation. That is something I have not heard any other school doing.”

Bishop Michael Barber of the Oakland Diocese did not respond to requests for comment. This incident  isn’t the first sticking point between the diocese and Catholic schools in the area; in 2023, the diocese pressured another Catholic high school in Alameda to “limit the use of alternative pronouns for the school’s trans, nonbinary, and gender nonconforming students.”

Outside the Bay Area, conservative politicians are working to take down the Pride flag in schools which emphasize inclusion . Sonja Shaw, who is running to become California’s superintendent of public instruction, said “classrooms should be places of learning, not platforms for political or cultural messaging.” 

O’Dowd’s president, Kim Walsh, said in a statement to the school’s parents that Pride flags had become a “lightning rod” for tensions in the Catholic Church, and in Catholic schools, and that the school didn’t want a “symbol to become the source of division that diminished our ability to care for students.” 

The goal of the Inclusive O, Walsh said, was to “affirm that our LGBTQ+ students, families, faculty, and staff are seen, known, loved, and belong here.” 

—Lynnzee Dick, New Ways Ministry, September 7, 2026