By Kathryn J. Perkins, Ph.D.

Safe haven. A place of protection and safety, a site of rest and refuge. Throughout the history of LGBTQ+ communities in the United States, there have been sites of safe haven that played critical roles in supporting our survival and resistance to oppression. From bars and ballrooms to cities with community centers and non-discrimination ordinances, LGBTQ+ history is filled with stories of how important these sites of safety have been.

In many ways, the state of California has been a safe haven for LGBTQ+ people. Pioneering the offering of domestic partnerships and anti-discrimination protections, the state helped to pave the way for widespread legal, cultural, and political change for queer and trans people. These advances didn’t just happen because of brilliant legal strategists and courageous politicians though, it also happened because of riots, marches, and grassroots activism in the face of brutal adversity. Our LGBTQ+ elders in California used all the tools at their disposal to carve out space for our communities to safely exist and dreamed of a future where we could thrive and flourish.

California LGBTQ+ activists learned the game of politics, unfair and opaque as it is, and developed networks of power and influence. They created the earliest gay and lesbian social and political organizations, the Mattachine Society (founded in 1950 in Los Angeles) and the Daughters of Bilitis (founded in San Francisco in 1955) that also published the first major queer periodicals the Mattachine Review and The Ladder, respectively. Los Angeles native and early trans activist Virginia Prince also went on to publish Transvestia, the first major periodical focused on trans issues beginning in 1960. 

Later, LGBTQ+ elders founded groups like Equality California that lobbied for progress at all levels, from the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to the statehouse in Sacramento. They hosted fundraisers and courted sympathetic politicians and ran for office to become politicians who wouldn’t need convincing, beginning with José Sarria running for a seat on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors in 1961. In 1982, the City of Laguna Beach elected Robert F. Gentry as the nation’s first openly gay mayor and Sheila Kuehl was elected in 1994 as the first openly gay member of the California State Legislature, serving terms in both the California State Assembly and the California State Senate. Through these “insider” strategies, these leaders helped to advance a long-term strategic vision of LGBTQ+ rights in California. An incremental process of slow gains building like bricks upon one another, this movement achieved public policy victories creating the modern infrastructure protecting LGBTQ+ rights we have today.

These victories included legislation in 1975 that protected consensual sex between adults, the creation and expansion of domestic partnership registries with benefits that eventually became analogous to civil marriage, the passage of non-discrimination laws and ordinances prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in housing, employment, and education, and the passage in 2011 of the first state law mandating the teaching of LGBTQ+ history in public schools. Even more recent achievements include the official state designation of August as Transgender History Month and legislation targeting anti-LGBTQ+ book bans in schools, both passed in 2024.

Often working in coordination with these legislative and public policy focused efforts, LGBTQ+ elders also developed campaigns for legal reform. The National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR), founded in San Francisco in 1977, successfully led impact ligation campaigns that helped to achieve marriage equality and enhance anti-discrimination protections. In 2002, the NCLR also established the Transgender Law Center, helping to launch the modern legal battle for trans equality as well.

In 2015, the Transgender Law Center represented Michelle Norsworthy, a transgender woman held in a California men’s prison suing to receive access to gender affirming care. A federal district judge ruled in her favor and in doing so, found that transgender status is a protected classification under the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution. This was the first time a federal court had come to this conclusion, and it initiated a wave of legal victories for transgender plaintiffs across the nation. Overall, both in their own legal reform efforts and through partnering with other legal advocacy organizations (such as the ACLU and Lambda Legal), these groups created national models for the fight for LGBTQ+ rights in the courtroom.

While the LGBTQ+ elders who fought for political and legal change through lobbying, running for office, canvassing, and legal reform made significant gains towards creating a safe haven in California, these efforts would never have been possible without the brave activists and revolutionaries who pushed for change from the “outside”. The protests and riots they organized forced those in power to pay attention to the clear injustices exposed by these political actions.

Throughout the 1950’s and 1960’s, the safe havens afforded to queer and trans Californians were few and far between. Bars became one of the few places of temporary refuge and community. Yet, these bars were subject to frequent police raids for serving LGBTQ+ patrons, as were the after-hours restaurants that some patrons congregated in when the bars closed for the night. Pushback on the climate of fear and persecution stoked by these raids came in the form of notable riots including the Compton’s Cafeteria riot in San Francisco in 1966 and a mass civil demonstration over raids of the Black Cat Tavern in Los Angeles in 1967. It is important to note that organizers, leaders, and participants in these direct-action protests and riots, much like at the 1969 Stonewall Inn riot in New York City, were often the most marginalized members of the LGBTQ+ community who were fighting for survival against police brutality both in the bars and on the streets. 

Riots and protests like these led to changes, including the formation of a more organized trans community network: the establishment of the National Transsexual Counseling Unit in San Francisco in 1968, the formation of the (still published) LGBTQ+ magazine The Advocate in 1967, and the founding of the Metropolitan Community Church in Los Angeles in 1968.

It is clear then from studying LGBTQ+ history in California, and beyond, that it is a diverse, intersectional, and pluralistic coalition of courageous activists and community leaders that paved the road to social and legal change for LGBTQ+ people. We needed all hands on deck and to use all the tools at our disposal to make progress possible and sustainable.

As a queer and transgender woman living in California, I am incredibly grateful to the brave LGBTQ+ elders who struggled over the last century to make this state the safe haven it is today. I am also a proud faculty member of the California State University system, and I began my gender transition after moving here from Texas for this job.

In many ways, the deep sense of community and safety afforded by the strong legal protections in California helped me to come out and begin my transition. I’ve now come to know many other trans and nonbinary folks with similar stories, united by the freedom to be ourselves because we are safe, loved, and protected here. That safety is a gift that our queer and trans elders fought hard for.

And yet, that fight is not over. Recent backlash against the gains made for LGBTQ+ rights in California and nationally, from non-discrimination protections to marriage equality, has created a wave of counter-mobilization that is crashing down all over the nation. With over 1,000 anti-LGBTQ+ bills recently proposed in state legislatures, most of them targeting transgender people and especially trans women and girls, there is a real fear that many of our hard won gains in civil rights are being quickly washed away.

Even here in California, our safe haven is under assault. With more anti-LGBTQ+ bills introduced in Sacramento each year and state leaders openly backsliding on support for LGBTQ+ protections, it is clear that the struggle for LGBTQ+ civil rights here is still ongoing. We must stay vigilant and never forget that our rights were won by decades of hard work and that they are never guaranteed.

We must stay united and use all of the tools we have, from insider strategies like aggressively lobbying our leaders to defend our anti-discrimination laws and protect vulnerable queer and trans youth, to outsider strategies like protests and marches to keep the pressure on those in power and remind them that we are here and here to stay. 

LGBTQ+ elders fought too hard for recognition, dignity, and visibility for us to cower in this moment. If LGBTQ+ history teaches us anything, it is that our authenticity and audacity to be who we are as queer and trans people is often threatening to those who are afraid to confront their own shadows and prefer a world where everyone is forced to conform. Our existence is resistance, it is defiance, and that challenge is one that often brings cycles of oppression and attempts to target and erase us.

Our history shows us that these efforts are ultimately futile. We will not be erased. We have overcome times of darkness and adversity before, from police raids on our gathering places to legal bans on our relationships and free gender expression, we fought back and we overcame. We created safe havens in our community centers and mutual aid networks, we ran for office and filed lawsuits, we resisted and dared to keep being ourselves by loving and leaning on one another until the tide turned.

These lessons from our LGBTQ+ elders, lessons found in the outstanding and invaluable collection of stories found here, give us inspiration and hope. A radical hope that even when it seems it is impossible to overcome stigma, hate, and prejudice coming from the halls of power, we have indeed overcome.

I’m proud to live in the California built by these amazing LGBTQ+ community leaders and activists and want to encourage you to honor their legacy by engaging with their powerful narratives. To find yourself in their stories of resilience and authenticity and to be inspired by their courage and strength.

May we pick up their mantle and continue to advocate for justice and equality in all the spaces we are in, may we continue to seek out and create safe haven for those marginalized by oppression and stigma, and may we dare to be courageous as we love one another and ourselves enough to keep moving onward and upward towards a future where we can all fully be ourselves and fully belong.

Kathryn J. Perkins, Ph.D. is the Chair and Associate Professor of Political Science at California State University, Long Beach.