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San Francisco Prides decision to ban police officers from marching in uniform in next months parade elicited strong reactions last week: Law enforcement, firefighters, Mayor London Breed and openly gay District Six Supervisor Matt Dorsey, who previously served as the Police Departments lead spokesperson, all said they would boycott the 52nd annual event because of it.

The ban doesnt apply to police officers providing security at the parade. It requires only that the ones who march wear anything but their full police uniforms.

The backlash shows how, even in liberal San Francisco, asking cops to leave their dress blues at home can be controversial despite a years-long national effort to create more distance between the LGBTQ community and a fraternal order that doesnt have a history of treating queer people justly.

While San Francisco Pride announced its police uniform ban in 2020, pandemic-related parade cancellations kept it from being tested until now, which is why some local politicians and residents are in such a huff. But bold political stances have always been part of this citys annual celebration of LGBTQ community and culture, which culminates with the summer weekend procession that regularly draws massive crowds in the tens of thousands.

The roots of this particular stance go back six years.

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After the Orlando nightclub massacre in June 2016, local Pride organizers announced increased security metal detectors and roughly 25% more police at its racial and economic justice-themed parade that year.

This happened at a moment when Black Lives Matter was ascending behind its work to bring attention to police killings, including the 2015 death of Mario Woods, shot 20 times by San Francisco police officers for reportedly refusing to drop a knife. The Bay Area chapter of Black Lives Matter backed out of participating in the Pride parade as a grand marshal, with BLM member Malkia Cyril noting at the time that increasing the police presence at Pride does not increase safety for all people.

At the time, then-SF Pride board President Michelle Meow said she understood the BLM move and that, going forward, Pride would rethink what safety means outside of police protection, because that is not the answer, the Guardian reported.

Five months later, the U.S. Department of Justice released a scathing report about the San Francisco Police Department, detailing the same institutionalized racial bias that BLM had cited for sitting out the Pride parade.

By 2019, anti-police demonstrators blocked the parade route on Market Street at Sixth Street for almost an hour, The Chronicle reported. Video footage circulated on Twitter shows officers shoving people, and at one point dragging a protester across the pavement. In the background, parade-goers can be heard shouting, Cops out of Pride!

SF Pride asked that the citys Department of Police Accountability look into SFPDs actions. When the city responded a year later by saying it found no evidence of wrongdoing, local Pride leaders issued a statement condemning the findings and announcing the uniform ban.

From 2017 to 2021, LGBTQ organizers in New York, Washington, D.C., Denver and other cities either banned uniformed officers from marching in their parades or disinvited cops altogether.

The actions push back against power structures, like police, that have historically mistreated marginalized communities. Even today, LGBTQ people are much more likely to be arrested than straight people and remain overrepresented in every facet of the criminal legal system, according to a report last year from the Prison Policy Initiative.

In a statement Monday, Breed called her parade boycott a very hard decision. Dorsey, the man she appointed supervisor, labeled the uniform ban a policy of exclusion.

San Franciscos Transgender District responded in an Instagram post Thursday specifically calling Breeds choice a betrayal of inclusive values and ethics that have defined the city... as a safe haven for the LGBTQ+ community for decades.

While the relationship between local law enforcement and the LGBTQ community is less fraught than in other parts of the country, anti-LGBTQ hysteria is resurgent in some states, shaping school curriculum and legislation. And trans people remain far more likely than cisgender people to experience physical violence when interacting with police, according to the Anti-Violence Project.

Even the SFPD lacked a policy requiring officers to refer to transgender, gender variant and gender nonbinary individuals by their preferred pronouns until 2018.

Let me echo the point BLM made six years ago: Law enforcement uniforms and guns dont signify safety for everyone. SF Prides ban isnt anti-police. Its pro-peace of mind for groups rarely afforded it.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Justin Phillips appears Sundays. Email: jphillips@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JustMrPhillips

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S.F. Prides police uniform ban was years in the making. The backlash to it is troubling - San Francisco Chronicle