San Francisco is wrapping up another fantastic Pride celebration weekend. These days I don’t get so excited about going into the fray for the alcohol-fueled party with hundreds of thousands of jubilant, love-filled revelers in the streets, but I always like to mark the weekend anyway. Last night I went to the Tenderloin to take part in some immersive theater: the outstanding Compton’s Cafeteria Riot. (If you’re local to SF and haven’t been, it’s playing for 5 more months and you should treat yourself.)
From their website: “In 1966, three years before Stonewall, the Tenderloin district of San Francisco became the stage for one of the first acts of organized LGBTQ+ resistance in the United States. The queens and transgender women who gathered at Compton’s Cafeteria weren’t just meeting for a meal—they were building community and finding strength in their shared struggles.”
For me, this felt like the right way to mark Pride in 2026. There’s so much to celebrate about being queer (or lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, non-binary, two-spirit, intersex, or any other sexual orientation or gender identity). But right now there’s a bit of an extra edge to it. Celebration is resistance. And there’s so much hatred swirling around these days that we absolutely must resist…for ourselves, and for others who are different than we are.
Maybe it’s in part because of my experience in Compton’s Cafeteria last night, but today I’m especially thinking about trans kids, and the importance of protecting them now more than ever.
I’ve already talked in this Substack about our need to protect trans kids, back in December. (If you haven’t already read that one, please take a few minutes to do so. The attacks on trans kids have been incessant and awful since Day 1 of this Administration.) Six months later, it’s worth another post.
Back in March, a federal judge in Oregon ruled Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had overstepped his legal authority when three months earlier he declared that providers of gender affirming care to minors “do not meet professionally recognized standards.” The Trump administration had been sued by 21 states that were seeking to stop them from ending federal funding to hospitals providing gender-affirming care. RFK Jr’s 12-page declaration on this issue (which you have to read here, since they’ve removed it from the HHS website now…all hail the archivists) states that it “supersedes” statewide or national standards of care and that “sex-rejecting procedures for children and adolescents are neither safe nor effective as a treatment modality for gender dysphoria, gender incongruence, or other related disorders in minors.” This is how the states sued, since states have the legal right to regulate the practice of medicine within their own borders, and the executive branch of the federal government does not have the authority to unilaterally establish a national medical standard. And at least 21 states, unlike the federal government, want to support the practice of medicine based on science, not ideology. The relief from this federal injunction is temporary, but at least it’s relief.
But then—of course—the assaults continued. Because this is how it goes these days! Last month, NYU Langone Hospital was issued a federal criminal subpoena over the care they’ve provided to trans youth in New York City. A federal grand jury in the Northern District of Texas issued the subpoena, and by doing so demanded information on every minor who received gender-affirming care at NYU Langone since 2020, as well as the names of any providers at the hospital who were involved in offering such care in that timeframe.
Think about this for a moment. Especially if you have kids. Set the trans issue aside for a moment. Really, do this with me. Imagine your kid was dealing with some critical issue that was highly stigmatized. Something you might not want to mention to your colleagues in the lunchroom, or have other kids at school know about, for fear of your kid being treated badly by others. Then imagine you found a place where they could go see medical professionals who really cared about them and wanted to help them feel good again, and you went there feeling confident that HIPAA rules would mean the medical folks couldn’t talk about it, and no one would have to know unless you (or your kid) chose to tell them. So you went and got your kid that care—potentially with a lot of anxiety, and a lot of financial strain. And then imagine that years later, you found out that a grand jury from a state 2,000 miles away had issued a subpoena that was intended to expose your kid for having gone there, along with the medical professionals who helped them. This is what’s happening here. How would you feel?
Just a few weeks ago, a federal judge blocked the Trump administration from similarly obtaining the hospital records of trans minors who’ve undergone medical-affirming treatment in California. I live here, and a lot of the trans kids I know are here, so that’s another big relief…but there are lots of trans kids who are not fortunate enough to live in California. According to Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for LGBTQ Rights (formerly NCLR), Trump’s Justice Department initially filed lawsuits trying to compel hospitals nationwide to hand over the records of trans minors receiving care, but “nearly a dozen federal judges rejected their suits.” So what did the Trump administration do? They “quietly opened criminal investigations and threatened to prosecute hospitals that didn’t release their records.” So they tried to do it legally, got repeatedly blocked, and then basically turned to blackmail. (I’m not a lawyer. Maybe it’s not technically blackmail. But it sure feels a lot like it to me.)
These are children. As Bruce Mirken said: “This is not difficult: Gender-affirming care is health care, period, and decisions about that care belong to patients and their health care providers (and families in the case of minors), not politicians on an ideological crusade.”
Whether you celebrate Pride each June—or heck, whether you even like kids or not—it shouldn’t be hard to want to protect trans kids from having politicians meddling in their healthcare decisions. I have lots of pride in trans kids for being brave enough to speak their truth, and in their families and medical providers who are trying to help them live their best lives. I look forward to the days when I can have pride in my federal government again. If we all speak up for the rights and safety of trans kids, maybe we can help bring that future a bit closer.