CA bill would protect LGBTQ foster youth from non-affirming homes

by John Ferrannini

ACalifornia lawmaker announced a bill March 17 would limit the ability of prospective foster parents who aren’t affirming of LGBTQ youth identity to become resource families.

Senate Bill 407, introduced by gay state Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) is seeking to clarify section 16519.61 of the California Welfare and Institutions Code, which governs how counties or departments can deny or refuse someone’s ability to become a foster parent.

Wiener told the Bay Area Reporter that while some people may have objections to LGBTQ rights – 29% of Americans were not in favor of same-sex marriage according to a 2022 Gallup poll, for example – that doesn’t give them license to hurt queer young people developing a sense of their identities.

“Being a resource family is a privilege, not a right,” Wiener stated, referring to foster parents.

“If a family feels that their religious beliefs prevent them from supporting a foster kid’s full identity, they are unfit to take on this responsibility. A person’s religious views don’t override a kid’s right to be safe.”

Wiener also stated, “every child deserves to be 100% supported at home.”

“SB 407 ensures that foster youth receive this essential support by specifically requiring LGBTQ acceptance be considered in the resource family approval process, creating standard documentation for the assessment of LGBTQ youth needs, and ensuring more frequent follow-up,” he continued. “These youth are at high risk for homelessness, criminal justice involvement, and mental health issues, and we must do everything in our power to ensure they have a safe home in the state of California.”

The law currently states that the California Department of Social Services “may deny a resource family application or rescind the approval of a resource family, and the department may exclude an individual from any resource family home, for ... conduct that poses a risk or threat to the health and safety, protection, or well-being of a child, another individual, or the people of the State of California.”

Erik Mebust, Wiener’s communications director, told the B.A.R. that “the part we’re trying to clarify with our legislation” is whether that conduct includes not affirming a child’s LGBTQ identity by, for example, holding that homosexuality is wrong, or that gender is fixed at birth.

“Right now it’s unclear if that conduct qualifies as a threat to the child and our legislation would clarify that it is, and that it’s valid grounds to deny a potential resource family,” Mebust stated.

“Our bill expressly clarifies that conduct of these kinds posing risk/threat to protection or well-being of a child specifically includes LGBTQ youth,” he added.

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by Gwendolyn Ann Smith

There are many who want to claim that transgender lives are built on falsehoods, that everything about us is a lie.

For those of us who are trans feminine, you may hear fanciful stories about us transitioning merely to attack other women in bathrooms, or to coerce other lesbian women into sexual relationships. You’ll also hear how we’re somehow only identifying as transgender in order to dominate the lucrative world of women’s sports.

In some circles, we’re called “traps,” a slang built on the idea that we appear as alluring females in order to “trick” straight men into having “gay” sex. I, quite frankly, don’t feel I have any reason to explain how ludicrous that is.

Meanwhile, trans masculine people are presented without agency. You

Vernadette Broyles is president and general counsel of the Child and Parental Rights Campaign Inc.

crass and obvious reframing of the old “gays recruit” trope, reimagined for the QAnon era, somehow equating pedo of their young daughter, tossed out manufactured claims of inappropriate contact between her transitioning spouse and the child.

While outside divorce court, my trans friend overheard opposing counsel stating that it was obvious to them that the trans woman must be lying about not molesting her daughter, because, after all, she was trans and inherently deceptive.

Indeed, the popular culture view of transgender people is one of deception. Even the so-called good examples seen in any number of comedies, such as “Mrs. Doubtfire,” still present any sort of trans presentation as one of deceit.

Yet, these aren’t the sort of falsehoods I want to focus on.

Mother Jones recently published a feature article on attempts to adopt anti-transgender legislation around the country. This year, for example, over being done in secret between a network of anti-trans organizations.

Indeed, many of the bills going around share similar language and aims, clearly crafted not by individual lawmakers, but by these groups behind the scenes. In more than one statehouse, for example, lawmakers could not explain exceptions allowing genital surgeries on intersex children in their own bills, or even seemed to know what “intersex” meant.

One of those named in the Mother Jones article is Vernadette Broyles, who serves as the president and general counsel of The Child & Parental Rights Campaign based out of Georgia. Among many other things, Broyles is currently representing Jamie Reed.

Reed has made some incendiary claims ing misleading information about the effects of hormones and puberty blockers, she also passes along a story of one trans child who claimed to be an attack helicopter, and was quickly prescribed hormone replacement therapy. Apparently, she did not know that “I identify as an attack helicopter” is a fairly well-known meme, and one usually used to mock transgender people. There is a bigger issue or two at play with Reed, however. The patient information alluded to in the aforementioned “attack helicopter” story she provided, as well as other details she presented, make it clear that she is retaining confidential medical information – and providing some of it to journalists.

On top of this, many people have called out much of what Reed has claimed, perhaps most importantly that she was somehow an innocent bystander turned whistleblower. One parent, Jennifer Harris Dault, took to her Twitter account to directly speak “I was told I’d receive an email with resources, including therapists ... but that at my child’s age (6 at that point) no therapist would really see her unless she was at risk of selfharm,” wrote Dault. “She [Reed] also told me that the clinic would not see up until puberty started.”

Like so many other things, this turned out to be false.

I would like to say that the idea of transgender people being deceptive might be a certain level of projection on the part of these anti-transgender bigots, but I’m not entirely sure that’s true.

Rather, I feel that many do believe that transgender people are deceptive. It is a deep-seated trope, as I noted before.

So, in believing that, these bigots feel justified to “fight fire with fire” and embrace their own desires to deceive.

It’s time for some truth. t

Gwen Smith is here to live her truth. You’ll find her at gwensmith.com

From page 1 to San Francisco from San Diego two years ago.

“I love it. It is so big; my dreams could fit in here,” she said of the space with brick walls and wood-beam rafters. “Trans people are so often put in a corner of an office in a cubicle. It is amazing to see trans people occupying a space like this that we can be proud of.”

The new facility is seen as providing a true “home” to the city’s transgender community, said Nicky “Tita Aida” Calma, a trans woman who is the San Francisco Community Health Center’s managing director. It provides everything from mental health and substance use counseling, testing and treatment for sexually transmitted infections, to case management and social support groups like its weekly Taco Tuesday get-togethers and new Folk & Swagger meet-up for trans men.

“What we have here is groundbreaking,” Calma said.

She is one of 13 full-time staffers who are trans or gender-nonconforming and now overseeing the new Trans Thrive location. It soft opened March 13 and is currently open from 2 to 5 p.m. weekdays at 1460 Pine Street near Polk.

“Seeing it open feels amazing. I have never seen a place like this before,” said Alejandra De La Vega, a

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