This 92-Year-Old Mom Has Been Going To Pride With The Same Sign For More Than 30 Years

Frances Goldin goes to New York City Pride every year with same sign

Loving our children is such an important message to one mom that she’s been going to Pride parades and events with the same sign for more than 30 years. Kickass mom Frances Goldin attends New York City Pride with her sign that reads “I adore my lesbian daughters. Keep them safe.”

“It’s very important to me and I’m very grateful that I’m able to carry it each year,” she explained to Buzzfeed. “I am now 92 years old and I hope to keep going for as long as I am able.” At one pride, back in 1997, the amazing mom caught the ear of a Washington Post reporter telling them that society allows discrimination against gays and lesbians.”Difference enriches us all,” she told them all those years ago. And now, decades later, Goldin is still just as committed to her message.

Her journey as a gay rights activist started at New York City’s first Pride Parade in 1970. Her daughters – Sally, 70, and Reeni, 68 – came out right after it. Goldin says she’s been going to the NYC Pride “since the beginning.” The event’s held on the last Saturday in June to honor the 1969 Stonewall riots. “She really puts her money where her mouth is. She works for it. That’s her life. That’s just who she is,” Reeni shared with reporters, adding that her mother “believes in equality and fairness and what’s right.”

Her special sign that’s been documented by photographers for decades was painted by a city planner who happened to be a close friend. The message “I adore my lesbian daughters,” first gained the New York mom a lot of attention in person and then online. “She’s very extroverted. She loves the spotlight, and she wears it well,” her daughter Sally said. In 1993, Goldin added “Keep them safe” to her sign when she attended the historical LGBT march on Washington, DC because, according to her, a protest sign must have a demand. “A proud parent of lesbians,” is written on the back of it.

Photos of Goldin attending pride events over the many years have gone viral online, but helping young LGBT people has always been the point in her attending Pride. “Everybody would come running up to her and cry, kiss her, and say, ‘Would you call my mother?’ or ‘Would you be my mother?’” Sally told reporters. “She’s met people who she is still very close to at the parades. She’s a model for how parents should be behaving towards their kids.”

Her positive message hit home for so many people that she started receiving requests to reach out to parents of LGBT people. “I think I changed a few people’s minds and I’m glad about that,” she explained. “Everyone should support their gay and lesbian children, they’re missing a lot in life if they don’t.” If her own kids couldn’t attend the parade then Goldin went with her daughters’ friends. “My friends, young women who she knew, they would go along with her,” Reeni said. “They would be her daughters. People would ask, ‘Are these your daughters?’ She would say ‘yes!’ They clearly weren’t, but she would make them hers.”

Now that she’s nearly 100, Goldin also has her health to think about. So far, she’s only missed one Pride event because of a heart attack. She brings her wheelchair along so when the crowd and heat become too much she can rest. Her sign’s in good shape, and the incredible mom plans on carrying it again. “Since the beginning of the parade, I’ve been going and waving my sign,” Goldin shared. “It sort of hit a nerve with people, particularly those whose parents rejected them. The response to the sign is always so great — it urges me to keep going.”