Joe Hollendoner, Chief Executive Officer of the LA LGBT Center, on familial support, community empowerment and moving forward
Chosen family. It’s a concept and practice that resonates deeply with members of the LGBTQ+ community. Some of us have needed to build communities of friends to fill the gap created by our traditional families not accepting us for who we are. Others of us who have received the support of their families have been lucky enough to expand their networks to include friendships that are familiar in nature. And I hope regardless of your relationship with your family, you consider the Center part of your chosen family because you are a vital part of this organization’s 50+ year history.
Every day, I have the good fortune of seeing how the Center is providing familial support to members of our community. Our Senior Services’ housing and other programs are providing LGBTQ+ elders who don’t benefit from the same marriage or family structures as their heterosexual peers with much-need and much-deserved care. In our community sites like Trans Wellness Center, Mi Centro, and Center South, we’ve formed support groups for queer and trans folks to gain peer and professional support dealing with the trauma and pain associated with fractured family bonds. And of course, there’s Youth Services, which recently expanded our foster care programming to ensure that the disproportionate amount of LGBTQ+ children who are in the welfare system are being properly cared for by their foster parents.
Empowering our chosen family is at the center of what we do, which makes what our political opponents are doing to our community that much more sickening. These extremists are taking a page from a decades-old playbook that’s once again proving effective. LGBTQ+ people are, they say, the enemies of the American family. They claim we’re indoctrinating their children, that we’re enforcing a “gay agenda” in school classrooms, and that LGBTQ+ inclusion is akin to sexualizing youth.
What a terrible irony that we—the people who house, heal, and care for those rejected by their parents and communities—are somehow the enemies of the American family. The real enemy is, of course, this very tired brand of hatred.
Over the past three months, my team has been inundated with pleas for help from concerned LGBTQ+ students and their parents everywhere from North Hollywood to Glendale, Chino Valley to Temecula, Glendora to Orange County, where a far-right ploy to take over our school boards and enforce anti-LGBTQ+ policies is, unfortunately, taking hold.
Our employees have been forced by the police to shelter in place during a school board meeting; they’ve feared for their safety at protests outside of our longstanding partner LAUSD; they’ve begun canvassing efforts in areas of our city we never assumed would be our opposition; and they’ve started to form the roadmap to our 2024 election to ensure that candidates who are supportive of LGBTQ+ people and families are elected.
I’ve racked my brain to make sense of this moment, but I have to remind myself that hate follows no logic. Instead, I’ve found my grounding in our community here at the Center—where we somehow find a way to gather and resist. We’ll be doing just that in a couple of weeks as we throw the world’s largest free conference for LGBTQ+ youth, Models of Pride, which will not only feature trans activist Dylan Mulvaney and the queer recording artist Hayley Kiyoko, but will help middle and high school students from all over southern California mobilize in support of safe and inclusive school communities.
The strength of a family is often tested in times of great stress. This is, unfortunately, one of those times. I have no doubt that as long as the Center’s family continues to show the strength, courage, and commitment that we always have, we’ll welcome more people than ever before to count themselves as proud members of our family.
In solidarity,
Joe Hollendoner
This article first appeared in the LA LGBT Center’s Vanguard Now.
