He was raising money to fight HIV at a Christmas show by the San Francisco Gay Men's Chorus when longtime gay activist Cleve Jones said something that has stuck in my mind ever since. Speaking about the struggle for LGBTQ rights, he said, "If you take it for granted, they'll take it away."
It wasn't the first time I hoped Jones was wrong about something, but as usual, he wasn't. Despite Donald Trump's bigoted attacks against transgender people, he was reelected president two weeks ago, and many of his supporters very much want to see our hard-won progress on LGBTQ equality taken away.
The coming months and years are going to be difficult for our community. We know that Trump will seek to obliterate trans people — to end health care access, criminalize parents of trans kids and doctors who treat trans people, ban trans access to restrooms, locker rooms, sports, and other spaces, and strip away hard fought legal protections. As trans people are targeted by right wing extremists and blamed by some Democrats for the election loss — a bogus and harmful claim — we need to have trans people's backs.
Fortunately, your LGBTQ elected officials haven't taken anything for granted, and we've been preparing for this moment since red states began previewing what a right-wing federal government would seek to do. The California Legislature — one of the gayest Legislatures in the country, with 10% of lawmakers identifying as LGBTQ — has spent years building up a groundwork of protections that will serve as a strong base for the hard work of defending California's LGBTQ community against a second Trump presidency.
The most recent example of this work is the massive success of Proposition 3, a ballot initiative I co-authored with gay Assemblymember Evan Low (D-Cupertino) in the Legislature. Prop 3 enshrined the right to marriage equality in the California Constitution by stripping away the zombie language left over from 2008's infamous Prop 8. When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, a justice signaled he would also like to revoke the federal right to marriage equality enshrined in the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision. Prop 3 protects California residents from that particular nightmare.
Our community should take heart not just from the fact that Prop 3 passed, but from the margin by which it was approved. In 2000, California voters first banned same-sex marriage by a margin of 61% to 39%. In 2008, they again banned marriage equality but with a much weaker margin — 52% to 48%. This year, Prop 3 passed with 61% of the vote. While the attacks on our community continue — and the attacks on our transgender siblings should alarm us all — the results are a powerful reminder of how much hearts and minds can change in a relatively short period.
We've also worked for years to address the multifaceted needs of the trans community, including health care needs, and in this year's state budget, I worked with the LGBTQ Legislative Caucus to provide funds to support trans immigrants. These programs will provide critical legal services to refugees seeking asylum from transphobia abroad, and will serve as a strong base from which to continue working to defend this vulnerable community from Trump's inhumane scheme for mass deportation.
Our Attorney General Rob Bonta is also poised to vigorously defend our LGBTQ communities from the assault Trump has promised. Governor Gavin Newsom recently declared a special session of the Legislature — to commence when we're sworn in on December 2 — to fast-track additional funding that the attorney general can use to defend Californians from the threats presented by Trump and his allies.
The attorney general will have a strong array of legal tools at his disposal from previous efforts to protect LGBTQ Californians from MAGA extremists. The most prominent is Senate Bill 107, the Trans State of Refuge Law that I authored in 2022. SB 107 helps protect trans kids and their family members in California from being targeted by other states' laws that criminalize gender-affirming health care.
Unfortunately, we know that not all of the attacks on our community will come from the federal government and other states. Trump's hateful rhetoric and his allies' incessant disinformation campaign about the trans community is triggering a horrifying rise in violence against trans people. This op-ed will run online on Transgender Day of Remembrance, and at least 32 transgender people have been murdered since this date last year.
With violence against transgender people still on the rise, our communities need more protection than ever. CalOES is in the process of selecting this year's recipients of its Nonprofit Security Grant program, which provides funding to offset security costs for any nonprofit serving a community frequently targeted for hate crimes. Past recipients have included Planned Parenthood and LGBTQ community groups. I helped champion this program as co-chair of the Legislative Jewish Caucus — another community targeted by extremists.
Much work remains. As we wait to see what form the MAGA assault on LGBTQ people will take next, we are preparing plans to protect access to gender-affirming health care and PrEP, to keep information about LGBTQ people from being banned in libraries in schools, to safeguard personal data, secure access to IDs, and much more. Any threat to these core freedoms will be met with the full force of California's right to self govern under the constitution.
I'm deeply moved by the immense progress our state has made on LGBTQ equality and dignity since I first arrived in San Francisco 27 years ago. But there was a time before these protections were won, and our community managed to survive, thrive, organize, and resist. I'll be drawing strength from those giants past and present upon whose shoulders I stand, as we enter the new year ready to fight any attack on our community's basic dignity — indeed, our very existence.
State Senator Scott Wiener, a gay man, was just reelected to represent District 11, which includes all of San Francisco and a portion of northern San Mateo County.
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