When coming home from a quinceañera at around the age of 14, Kevin Al Perez was confronted by his mother who discovered that night that he was gay.
“She brought the Bible to the table. I was crying, she was crying,” recalled Perez, who is now proudly out.
He has since reconciled with his mother, but said that at the time, “There was a lot of, ‘why are you like this?’ or ‘you can’t be like this.’”
Perez recalled being scared, wondering where to go if he got kicked out of the house. He even considered staying under a bridge by the freeway for a few days until he could figure out a better option.
“I relied a lot on my chosen family, on my queer friends,” said Perez. “We all supported each other. We were all dealing with that same situation, and having those few spaces, those allies, like teachers, who saw us, was so important.”
Now Perez helps provide that same support and acceptance for queer youth as the co-founder and president of Somos Familia Valle, a San Fernando Valley based gender and racial justice LGBTQ+ organization.
“What I see the most with what we’ve been doing is, we take care of each other and we got each other’s back,” said Perez. “I think being a queer person, sometimes, we get to define our own family.”
He’s now been organizing within the queer community in the San Fernando Valley for over 10 years. Earlier this month, Somos Familia Valle opened an LGBTQ+ community center in Sun Valley.
“Our communities intersect in so many different issues,” said Perez, noting that “homelessness, seeking service, dealing with immigration, housing, the criminalization system, our youth in our schools,” are all factors that have to be addressed when working with LGBTQ+ communities.
Sometimes he feels like people forget or ignore that queer people are “part of the neighborhood. That we’re part of the communities here.”
Perez noted a recent uptick in anti-queer rhetoric in the San Fernando Valley coming from groups like Leave Our Kids Alone (LOKA) and Serving Family Values (SFV Alliance). These organizations often protest queer-friendly programming in schools and try to revoke legislation that protects trans youth, in the name of “parental rights.”
According to Perez, these groups use tactics to try to divide the community and erase queer history – often using race, religion and other factors to create false binaries.
He wore a pink t-shirt that read, “Leave Queer Kids Alone.”
Perez believes organizing and collaborating are the best means to foster strong networks that can combat hate and bigotry against the LGBTQ+ community.
“We have to be more collaborative,” said Perez. “When they see us united, working as queer people, as allies, as politicians, as all these service providers, that’s when they get scared.”
To effectively “build safer communities” and “build more acceptance,” as Perez is trying to do, he said there needs to be more funding and support for queer organizations and programming in the San Fernando Valley.
He hopes that one day there will be a level of societal acceptance that doesn’t require queer people to hide or have to announce their queerness.
“We’re tired of being in those ‘closets.’ We’re tired of waiting to ‘come out,’” said Perez. “We [shouldn’t] need to ‘come out.’”
For more information about Somos Familia Valle visit:
somosfamiliavalle.org
@somosfamiliavalle
Or visit the community center located at:
12411 Sheldon St #3
Sun Valley, CA 91352
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.