Anti-LGBTQ+ Extremists Target Youth and Families

FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2022
Media Contact: Erika Ramirez Lee, [email protected], (619) 297-7683

Right now, right here in San Diego LGBTQ+ youth, families, drag queens, organizations,
educators, schools, small businesses, and events are coming under attack by anti-LGBTQ+
extremists.

In California, LGBTQ+ youth are legally protected from discrimination. These legal and civil rights
are part of the foundation of ensuring Californians are safe, but we’re seeing – and our youth
and communities are experiencing – an ongoing escalation of cyberbullying, hate speech,
threats, and harassment against LGBTQ+ youth and the adults that support them. Recently, this
spike in harassment and threats has targeted local schools, school districts, libraries, drag
performers, small businesses, individual educators, parents, and even LGBTQ+ youth
themselves.^

Student clubs like GSAs and Rainbow Groups have been targeted in school districts like
Carlsbad, San Diego Unified, and Vista. Age-appropriate books that include and celebrate
LGBTQ+ people have been challenged and called to be banned in Solana Beach and Poway
school district libraries. Public libraries in the San Diego region and across the nation are also
experiencing an increasing number of challenges to materials. Small businesses in Hillcrest and
Chula Vista have been harassed and cyberbullied for having LGBTQ+ owners and holding
LGBTQ+-inclusive events. Classroom teachers that incorporate LGBTQ+-inclusive books and
content into their curriculum have been met with hostility and intimidation. Individual
educators and administrators have been targeted for following the law and supporting
transgender youth in their schools throughout the County. Drag performers are being harassed
and threatened for reading children’s books and performing Disney-themed shows. School
board meetings have become toxic spaces with vile, hateful speech from adults about LGBTQ+
people, often while LGBTQ+ youth are in the room waiting for their own chance to speak. Staff
at youth-serving organizations have received threats of violence. Healthcare providers have
been harassed and cyberbullied for simply providing medically necessary, life-saving care to
transgender people.

This is not new. This is not acceptable. This is not a locally grown phenomenon.

This is the same tired hateful rhetoric that has been used against the LGBTQ+ community for
decades, and it’s being weaponized by coordinated campaigns from national extremist
organizations. National organizations such as the Heritage Foundation are preying upon parents’
very real fears for their children’s safety to plant seeds of hate, bigotry, and discrimination.

Groups like these regularly seek out “wedge” issues with which they can drive communities
apart. These are the same groups that are targeting the strawman of “critical race theory” in
schools, and challenging books and curriculum that teaches the truth about the Holocaust and
the genocide of indigenous people. Antisemitism, nationalism, xenophobia, sexism, white supremacy, anti-Blackness, and racism go hand in hand with this recent wave of homophobia
and transphobia. We stand united because we are fighting the same fight.

These threats and rhetoric have a real impact, not only on the direct targets of their hate but on
LGBTQ+ youth as a whole. The Trevor Project and GLSEN monitor the mental health and school
climate for LGBTQ+ youth, and both organizations have found concerns about increases in the
well-being of our youth in their recent reports. GLSEN reported that homophobic and negative
remarks about gender expression from teachers and school staff increased from 2019 to 2021.
The Trevor Project reported that 45% of LGBTQ+ youth seriously considered attempting suicide
in the past year.

In San Diego, our regional LGBTQ+ youth-serving organizations came together to collaborate
and work together in 2015, after a rash of LGBTQ+ teen suicides swept the County. The Youth
Services & Advocacy Committee is committed to supporting LGBTQ+ youth in order to keep
them safe – and alive. But we can’t do this alone.

We call on all San Diegans that truly care about the safety and well-being of all of our youth and
all of our neighbors to:
● Challenge anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric at your school board, library, on your social media feeds,
and at your dinner table.
● Hold local and national media accountable for their role in perpetuating this dangerous
and toxic rhetoric by anti-LGBTQ+ extremists.
● Support your local LGBTQ+ youth-serving organizations and LGBTQ+-owned and
-supportive small businesses.
● Know your rights as a parent, student, and educator
● Know and demand that your school implement the LGBTQ+ Youth Standards of Care

---

^ SEE ALSO: Press Release: Adults Bully School Boards & Target Kids in Anti-LGBTQ+ Culture War
(North County LGBTQ Resource Center, 10/19/22)

---

JOINT STATEMENT FROM:
The full list of 36 organizations and institutions and 14 elected/appointed officials joining this
statement can be found below.

SIGNED BY:

---