Rainbow Mafia / June 12, 2025
Yosemite Bans Giant Leftist Flags
El Capitan has been dealing with leftist protests, which finally led to a ban on large flag displays — a win for those who want an escape from the madness that is American politics.
Yosemite National Park’s granite rock faces are a Mecca of sorts for climbers. Formations like Half Dome and Cathedral Spire are popular spots to climb. None, however, is more famous than the imposing wall of El Capitan. It is a sheer granite edifice that is front and center when you first enter Yosemite.
Over the past several years, El Capitan has been hit by leftist political protests. In 2023, a climbing group known as Climbers With Palestine unfurled a large “stop the genocide” banner that was intended as prominent propaganda to greet park visitors.
One of the members who hung the sign, Miranda Oakley, is an expert climber and a Yosemite climbing guide who has scaled El Capitan over 20 times. She is also half-Palestinian. She told Climbing Magazine: “I’m not an activist. I’m a climber, that’s why I’m up here. Do what you can do to end this madness. Maybe it’s calling your representative, maybe it’s boycotting brands that profit from the apartheid, talking to friends and family, whatever. We’re just up here doing what we can do.”
This statement is silly. Oakley became an activist the second she decided to hang a political banner up on a prominent rock wall and when she involved herself in a climbing group called Climbers With Palestine. That’s about as politically neutral as a climbing group called Pro-Life Climbers. She is, however, not a very good activist. How many minds did her sign change? Probably less than the amount of people it annoyed. People don’t come to Yosemite to see political slogans plastered on majestic natural formations. It kind of defeats the purpose.
Some members of the National Park Service were part of the next group that decided to deface El Capitan with a political message. They hung a giant American flag upside down — a nautical symbol of distress — in protest of DOGE cuts to America’s national parks.
Finally, late last month, a group of transgender activists hung an obnoxiously large trans flag across the famous monolith. The flag was, according to the activists, 55’ by 35’. In other words, you couldn’t miss it. They were protesting rollbacks in “trans rights” — i.e., executive orders restoring common sense, military readiness, and protections for women and children.
An activist climber and drag queen named Wyn Wylie, a.k.a. “Pattie Gonia” — you may remember him from his 2023 North Face ad — apparently helped hang the flag. He told reporters: “We flew the Trans Pride flag in Yosemite to make a statement: Trans people are natural and Trans people are loved. Let this flag fly higher than hate. We are done being polite about trans people’s existence. Call it a protest, call it a celebration — either way, it’s giving elevation to liberation.”
While the very notion that they aren’t permitted to “exist” has always been a silly one, the claim that they have been “polite” is revisionist and laughable.
