Gay Jewish lawmaker running to replace Nancy Pelosi chased from San Francisco Trans March

California state Sen. Scott Wiener says he was harassed, threatened, and physically intimidated at San Francisco’s Trans March on Friday, forcing the out gay Jewish lawmaker to leave one of the country’s most important transgender Pride gatherings in a city that has long imagined itself as a refuge.

Wiener, a Democrat who represents San Francisco and is running for the congressional seat long held by retiring House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, said in a statement posted to Instagram that two incidents this week showed how easily political anger can curdle into something more menacing.

“Last night I attended the trans march, as I’ve done each year for the past 22 years since the first march in 2004,” Wiener wrote. “I attend each year in solidarity with our trans siblings, who are facing existential threats from right wing extremists, including the President.”

The San Francisco Trans March, first held in 2004, is one of the largest annual gatherings for transgender and gender-nonconforming people in the world. It is part protest, part mourning ritual, part family reunion, and remains a place where people who are targeted by law, policy, and street violence gather in public and insist on being seen.

This year, Wiener said, he could not safely remain.

He said he was walking through Dolores Park to attend a trans-led Pride Shabbat service connected to the march when a group began screaming at him, ran toward him, surrounded him, and harassed him “both verbally and physically, including physical contact.”

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“They made statements about my ‘Israeli handlers,’ among many other inaccurate, extreme, and vile statements,” Wiener said. “They were so physically and verbally aggressive that it was impossible for me to safely remain in the park.”

As a result, Wiener said, he left and did not participate in the march for the first time since its founding.

San Francisco’s Pride season unfolded this year against a national backdrop of escalating attacks on transgender people, including federal and state efforts targeting gender-affirming care, public accommodations, identity documents, and school sports.

But the incident involving Wiener also revealed a fracture inside progressive and LGBTQ+ spaces. Anger over Israel’s war in Gaza has, in some cases, blurred into the targeting of Jewish public figures as Jews.

A video that circulated online Friday showed demonstrators confronting Wiener as he tried to leave, criticizing his positions on Gaza and housing while also acknowledging his record on LGBTQ+ legislation. In one person can be heard telling Wiener, “I think your legislation on trans issues ... is fantastic,” before the exchange escalates.

“You do not belong here, Scott, anymore,” the person said. “It sucks because you’ve been wonderful. You’ve been wonderful for trans people, and you’ve been terrible ... on Gaza.”

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The person continued shouting as Wiener walked away. “Scott, do you have anything to say? Do you have anything to say about Gaza?” the person said. “How could someone like you do this to San Francisco?”

The same person later said, “I want to support someone who’s so positive on trans rights, but you’re a piece of shit.”

In his statement, Wiener drew a line between protest and intimidation. “I have no objection whatsoever to anyone disagreeing with me, opposing me, or protesting me,” he wrote. “All of that is core to democracy.”

But, he added, “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.”

Wiener said the Trans March incident followed another confrontation Wednesday night at a bar in the Mission District, where he had gone to watch a World Cup game with staffers. During the game, he said, a man cornered him and the young women staffers who were with him, screamed abuse at them, and was removed by bar employees.

After being ejected, Wiener said, the man stayed outside the bar for several minutes, shouting Wiener’s name and pounding on the side of the building near where he was sitting. Wiener said the same man had previously stalked him on a plane and in an airport in December 2023, shouting at him about his “tainted bloodline.”

The incident comes as political violence and intimidation increasingly shape what it means for LGBTQ+ people to seek or hold public office. A recent LGBTQ+ Victory Institute report, “Threats on the Trail: Experiences With Political Violence Among LGBTQ+ Candidates in the USA,” surveyed 215 LGBTQ+ candidates who ran between 2023 and 2025 across 42 states, Puerto Rico, and Washington, D.C. The report found that nearly nine in 10 candidates worried that running as out LGBTQ+ people would increase their risk of harassment or attack, while four in five feared physical violence. Nearly two-thirds experienced in-person harassment during their campaigns, almost eight in 10 encountered online abuse, and one in three reported receiving online death threats.

Evan Low, president and CEO of the LGBTQ+ Victory Institute and a former California state legislator, told The Advocate in May that candidate safety has become a question of democratic participation itself.

“Unfortunately, it’s not just about simply the individual harassment, but whether or not LGBT people can safely participate in our American democracy,” Low said. “If members of our community don’t feel safe, how do we participate in American democracy?”

U.S. Rep. Kevin Mullin, a California Democrat who represents part of the Bay Area, condemned the incident and defended Wiener.

“What happened to Senator @Scott_Wiener last night was unacceptable,” Mullin wrote on X. “Here in the Bay Area we have a long and proud history of heated protest and passionate disagreement; last night was not that. There is simply no place for hate speech, harassment, and violence — in our politics or elsewhere.”

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Mullin added that elected officials and candidates “do not lose their right to basic human decency” by appearing in their communities.

Jonathan Lovitz, senior vice president of campaigns and communications at the Human Rights Campaign, also responded to Wiener’s statement with a warning about antisemitism inside LGBTQ+ and progressive spaces. Lovitz urged Wiener to keep fighting.

“Being Jewish in some queer spaces has felt less safe than I’ve ever felt being queer in Jewish spaces,” Lovitz wrote in a comment on Wiener’s post. “We’ve allowed too many people to mistake outrage for justice and hate for activism. If we won’t confront antisemitism within our own movements, we undermine everything we claim to stand for — and weaken the democratic values that protect us all.”

Charlotte Clymer, a transgender writer, activist, and Army veteran, also condemned the confrontation.

“I want to be abundantly clear that what happened to Scott Wiener at yesterday’s trans rights rally in San Francisco was disgusting, appalling, and unacceptable,” Clymer wrote on Facebook.

Clymer said she was grateful for Wiener’s support for transgender equality and rejected the suggestion that the confrontation was simply about Gaza.

“This asinine behavior is not about Gaza,” she wrote. “It is about hatred of Jewish people. It is antisemitism. Mr. Wiener was targeted for being Jewish.”