A standing-room-only crowd was on hand for a special public forum with local LGBTQ+ community leaders at the San Fernando Library – the same location where raucous “parental rights” protesters blocked a planned Drag Story Hour reading last October. The panelists addressed struggles, resources and growing LGBTQ+ hate in Northeast San Fernando Valley.
Titled “Finding Support When Encountering LGBTQ+ Hate,” the April 20 panel discussion was presented by the San Fernando Valley Sun/el Sol as part of an ongoing effort to cover hate-related topics and methods of reporting hate crimes and incidents. A group of four panelists shared firsthand experiences, answered questions and offered suggestions for finding support.
While LGBTQ+ hate has seemingly been on the rise, both nationwide and locally – as witnessed at the Drag Story Hour melee – it’s far from a new phenomenon, said Kevin Al Perez, president and co-founder of Somos Familia Valle, a local gender and racial justice LGBTQ+ organization.
“I have seen this happening in our communities for quite a while,” said Perez, who identifies as queer and was raised in the San Fernando Valley. While the specific scenarios and groups may change over the years, the hate at the root of many of the groups remains the same, he said.
One of the groups represented at the Drag Story Hour protest – Leave Our Kids Alone (LOKA) – attempts to “sell the narrative” that they have God and religion on their side, noted Perez. And some of the same “religious right” protesters at the library were at a San Fernando City Council meeting April 16, celebrating the swearing-in of Victoria Garcia as the newest councilmember.
“But there’s religious folks in our [LGBTQ+] community,” said Perez. “There’s queer churches in the Valley … and our second San Fernando Valley pride [festivities were] hosted in a church.
“As an organizer [I’ve] been doing this work for 10 years,” added Perez, who helped organize the first San Fernando Valley Pride March and Conference in Panorama City in 2014.
“We’ve been organizing on the ground in the Valley for years,” he continued, “trying to help our communities, especially because our communities intersect in so many different issues – when it comes to homelessness, [immigration], housing, the criminal [justice] system, and the youth in our schools.”
Family Connections
Another big point of intersection is family, said Alejandro Soria of Sylmar, a licensed marriage and family therapist who is senior director of Outpatient Mental Health at the Village Family Services in North Hollywood, has his own private practice in the city of San Fernando and serves on LA County’s first-ever LGBTQ+ Commission.
“When I was coming out in the 80s, if you needed to [come out] to your family, it [would be], ‘Let’s hope they accept us,’ and if they [didn’t], you would move on to where you felt safe,” recalled Soria. These days, many of the youth and young adults he counsels routinely ask for his help opening the lines of communication with parents or close relatives – even, in some cases, after being kicked out of their homes because their family discovered they were gay or trans.
“They might ask for help – [with] shelter [or] therapy – and they also ask, ‘Can you get help for my parents and help them understand? Can you facilitate family therapy?’”said Soria. “What I’m finding is that there’s a huge need for the family to stick together, to want to stay together.”
Azucena Saldana, a queer trans woman from the Valley who serves as LGBTQ+ Community Engagement Specialist for Village Family Services, also regularly encounters individuals who hope to restore family connections.
Time often helps heal fractured ties, she said but acknowledged it can take more effort to foster genuine acceptance.
“If we work on the assumption that parents love their kids, and they want the best for them, [we can ask them] if they’re willing to love their children even more,” she said. “More” can mean participating in therapy with their kids or joining PFLAG (Parents, Friends, and Families allied with the LGBTQ community), which supports LGBTQ+ people and their families.
For Gizella Czene from Van Nuys – whose child, Anthony, is non-binary – arriving at a place of wholehearted acceptance was a difficult journey, she admitted.
“I remember when my kid first came out … the minute they left the room, I started crying and I did not stop crying for a long time,” said Czene. While she said she feels ashamed to admit it now, looking back she realizes that she was “really more concerned about myself than my kid.”
“I thought, ‘What will the neighbors say? … What will my family say?’” she said. “It was all about me, me, me, me.”
A major tipping point was witnessing her child being ostracized while playing soccer. As she watched from the sidelines, she saw her kid standing on the field being ignored by their teammates, who kicked the soccer ball to each other and acted like her child was invisible.
“I [thought], ‘Oh, my God, my kid is being ostracized simply because of who they are!’” said Czene, who eventually turned to PFLAG and got to know other parents just like herself.
Over the years, Czene became an active and outspoken advocate for her child and others. She leads peer support meetings for monolingual Spanish-speaking families across LA County and collaborates with faith-based groups and ministries that support the LGBTQ+ community.
“We want [parents] to stand up for their kids, to champion their kids, [because our] kids deserve to be loved, like anybody else,” she said.
LGBTQ+ Support and Community Feedback
During the Q&A segment of the forum, participants asked about a range of topics, including where to turn for help and resources, both for individuals and business owners. In addition, the groups represented by the panel – PFLAG, Somos Familia Valle and Village Family Services – Perez also encouraged people to utilize the new LA vs Hate hotline and website, which were established last year to allow LA County residents to report hate incidents and hate crimes.
“If you ever see or encounter hate in your own communities, just go to LA vs Hate and report it,” he said, noting that it was created as an alternative (or addition) to reporting incidents to law enforcement, and to track crime and incident rates and the communities being targeted.
San Fernando Police Department Chief Fabian Valdez was in attendance at the forum. He expressed interest in learning more about the organizations represented, and offered to have a “follow-up conversation” to learn about any upcoming events being planned in San Fernando.
“We want you to feel safe, we want you to feel heard,” said Valdez. “As a police department, we’re committed to ensuring that everybody exercises their respective freedoms. … We want to work with all groups [that] want to gather and voice opinions [so] they do it in a safe space.”
One member of the LGBTQ+ community in the audience was Ramon Solache, a licensed marriage and family therapist with the San Fernando Valley Community Mental Health Center, who came out as gay during the first National Coming Out Day. What truly resonated with him was seeing how many allies the LGBTQ+ community has, especially when business owner Christina Bernal asked how queer-friendly businesses in San Fernando can show their support.
“There’s a lot more support than I was aware of, and I think that if … we can join together and become a unit and become more visible, that it doesn’t feel so alone,” Solache said. “As someone who makes referrals, knowing that there’s so much more out there is important.”
Dani Varela, a transgender woman, also attended the forum. After the Drag Story Hour protest, she began mobilizing within the city of San Fernando after learning there were people who cared about her. And from the panel, she learned even more about her community.
“I think what I was able to take away is the fact that there are a lot of resources here in San Fernando already existing and I can join them right now or be a part of them as we speak,” Varela said. “Just join any community. There’s a community already existing for you and it’s never too late to join it or be a part of it. And I think it’s important to realize that you’re not alone, ever.”
Gabriel Arizon contributed to this story.
To report a hate crime or incident, or for more information, call 2-1-1 or go to: lavshate.org.
This resource is supported in whole or in part by funding provided by the State of California, administered by the California State Library in partnership with the California Department of Social Services and the California Commission on Asian and Pacific Islander American Affairs as part of the Stop the Hate program. To report a hate incident or hate crime and get support, go to CA vs Hate.