Pride Month Reflections

As we enter Pride Month, I’ve been reflecting on the challenges and triumphs facing San Francisco’s LGBTQ+ community, and the lessons about resilience, resistance and joy that being a member of this community has taught me.

President Donald Trump and the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement have relentlessly targeted LGBTQ+ people for years. The Trans Legislation Tracker identified 655 active anti-trans bills in consideration across the country just this year. Many of these laws attempt to criminalize LGBTQ+ people and constitute blatant discrimination. In California, we’re fighting back.

In 2022, I authored California’s LGBTQ+ state of refuge law to shield LGBTQ+ people and their families from these discriminatory laws while in California. It became a national model that other states have copied to show their solidarity with our community.

When Trump and MAGA Republican legislators cut funding for essential healthcare for transgender people while I was State Senate Budget Chair, I worked with my colleaagues to secure $15 million in state funds to backfill federal cuts to healthcare for the most vulnerable members of the LGBTQ+ community.

When MAGA trolls targeted LGBTQ+ people with harassment and intimidation, I worked to strengthen privacy laws to protect our LGBTQ+ community from their bullying tactics.

And this year, when the Supreme Court threatened our state’s youth conversion therapy ban, I fought back with a new law to let victims of conversion therapy more easily file malpractice claims. We need to send a loud and clear signal that conversion therapy is psychological torture, that it’s ineffective quackery that serves to harm and not heal, and that it has no place in California.

My legislative work to support LGBTQ+ people, in addition to my existence as an out gay elected official, have earned me years of vicious attacks from MAGA influencers like Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Megyn Kelly, Ted Cruz and Laura Loomer. They hate the idea of LGBTQ+ equality so deeply that some of them have even gone so far as to threaten me physically, and their army of followers have issued thousands of death threats to me over the years. Two people have been convicted in court for threatening my life.

Having to respond to so many direct threats to the LGBTQ+ community is jarring when, just a few years ago, it seemed that our society was making so much progress on LGBTQ+ civil rights. Since I came out of the closet in the early 1990s, we’ve moved so much closer to equality with the expansion of marriage rights, the end of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and the increase in LGBTQ+ representation across our culture.

I draw hope from my experiences as a young gay man who came of age at the height of the AIDS crisis. Back then, few seemed to care that our community was experiencing a mass die-off, and the Republicans in power at times seemed to be cheerleading the disease as the death toll rose.

Sticking together and fearlessly standing up to injustice is how LGBTQ+ people have survived. As a volunteer in the early ’90s on an AIDS hotline in Durham, N.C., I listened to the terror and misery of people who had just tested positive for the disease or were at significant risk of doing so. Like millions of others, especially lesbians, I gave them support and comfort at a time when everything seemed hopeless.

I also witnessed and participated in some of the boldest activism this country has ever seen. In the face of the federal government’s neglect, LGBTQ+ activists called out injustice and demanded to be treated as full human beings with the dignity we deserve. These brave actions led to policy changes that have saved millions of lives around the world.

As we enter Pride Month, it’s this legacy I’m most proud of. You don’t have to be a member of the LGBTQ+ community to learn the lesson from our experience: That even in the darkest times, our power lies in our ability to care for one another and confront injustice courageously. These days, we can all use that reminder.

Remember to stick together, show kindness and speak up in the face of injustice. Happy Pride!

Scott Wiener represents San Francisco and northern San Mateo County in the California Senate. He chairs the Senate Budget Committee and is a member of the California Legislative Jewish Caucus. He can be reached at 415-557-1300.