Some participants in a Pride event in San Francisco on Friday told Scott Wiener, a Jewish California state senator who is gay and who is running to succeed retiring Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), that he didn’t belong there and that they “f***ing hate you” and “you are a piece of s***" due to his policy on the “genocide” in Gaza.
Video recorded by one of the people yelling at Wiener circulated widely on social media.
“You’ve been wonderful for trans people,” the person recording the video yells at the state senator. “You’ve been terrible on Gaza. You do not belong here.”
“How could you do this to San Francisco?” the person adds, without making clear what exactly was allegedly being done to the city. “How could you betray queers?”
“You stopped being queer the moment you started supporting Israel,” someone yells at the state senator.
More than 100,000 people reportedly took part in the most recent annual Pride parade in Tel Aviv. Gay people are put to death in areas controlled by Hamas and other Islamist terror organizations.
In January, Wiener said that he would step down as co-chair of the California Legislative Jewish Caucus in February after accusing Israel of “genocide” in Gaza. Despite that accusation against Israel, which the Jewish state and U.S. officials, and many others, deny and say is an antisemitic charge, the protesters harassed him.
Wiener’s office stated on Saturday that in “two separate incidents this week” he was “harassed, threatened and physically intimidated while attending public events to engage with the San Francisco community.”
”Last night I attended the trans march, as I’ve done each year for the past 22 years since the first march in 2004. I attend each year in solidarity with our trans siblings, who are facing existential threats from right wing extremists, including the president,” Wiener stated. “It has been a deep honor to partner for many years with trans people to advance legislation and budget requests to support the community.”
”As I walked through Dolores Park to participate in a trans-led Pride Shabbat service in connection with the trans march, a group of people began screaming at me, ran up to me, surrounded me and began harassing me, both verbally and physically, including physical contact,” he said. “They made statements about my ‘Israeli handlers,’ among many other inaccurate, extreme and vile statements. They were so physically and verbally aggressive that it was impossible for me to safely remain in the park.”
“As a result, I left the park and, for the very first time, did not participate in the trans march,” he said.
That followed an incident the prior Wednesday “at a bar in the Mission where I’d gone to watch a World Cup game,” Wiener said.
“During the game, a man accosted me in a corner of the bar, effectively cornering me and the young women staffers who were with me. He screamed abuse at me and our staff before being ejected by the bar’s employees,” the state senator said. “After being ejected, the man remained outside the bar, shouting my name and pounding on the side of the bar near where I was sitting for several minutes. The same individual, in December 2023, stalked me on a plane and in an airport, shouting at me about my ‘tainted bloodline.’”
”I have no objection whatsoever to anyone disagreeing with me, opposing me or protesting me. All of that is core to democracy,” Wiener said. “I also have no issue when people talk to me on the street and ask questions or express opposition. That’s democracy, even when the people engaging in this conduct misrepresent my views.”
“But when opposition and disagreement transition to harassment, including cornering me, touching me or trying to physically bully me out of a public event, that crosses a line,” he stated. “We’re living in a time when violence is all too often threatened or used against people in public life. In San Francisco, we’re better than that.”
Daniel Lurie, mayor of San Francisco, stated that he “can never accept hate directed at a member of our community.”
“The language directed at Sen. Wiener yesterday was targeted, hateful and antisemitic. In San Francisco, we welcome disagreement and respectful dialogue around issues many of us feel passionately about—but we cannot allow harassment and threats of violence,” Lurie stated. “If you’re out celebrating Pride this weekend, I want you to be able to do it safely. Let’s also look out for each other so we can all have a great weekend. We are at our best as a city when we celebrate each other.”
Rep. Kevin Mullin (D-Calif.) stated that the incident was “unacceptable,” and Monique Limón, president pro tempore of the California state Senate, said that it “must be called out.”
Philip Klein, editor of National Review Online, wrote that he has “zero sympathy.”
“This desperate loser called Israeli actions ‘genocide’ to try and curry favor with the Jew-haters and they still harass him anyway,” he said. “Good.”
