A Year in Review
A message from Robert Costic, Board President
2025 was a year of unprecedented attacks on transgender rights across the nation, with particularly devastating impacts on trans youth and their families. After decades of progress toward LGBTQ+ equality, we find ourselves at a critical juncture where the very existence and dignity of transgender people—especially our children—are under coordinated assault.
Over 500 anti-trans bills were introduced in state legislatures this year, seeking to ban gender-affirming healthcare, exclude trans students from sports, criminalize supportive parents, and erase trans people from public life. California has long been a refuge state, but transphobia has arrived at our doorstep. The federal government has explicitly targeted California in lawsuits and policy rollbacks, and several hospitals here have already stopped providing gender-affirming surgeries for trans youth. Parents watch in anguish as other states criminalize the love and support they provide, while young people in our community fear losing access to the care they need.
These attacks are not new—they echo the exact rhetoric once used against gay and lesbian people. The same false claims about “protecting children,” the same manufactured fears about bathrooms and changing rooms, the same attempts to portray loving families as dangerous. Those of us who remember the battles for marriage equality recognize these recycled tactics of division and dehumanization.
But 2025 also revealed the extraordinary resilience of our community and the fierce love of families who refuse to let their children be erased. Through our support groups, advocacy work, and education programs, PFLAG San Francisco has stood as a beacon of hope in turbulent times.
Support As Resilience
This year, our support group attendance increased by 300%, providing crucial peer support for parents navigating their children’s gender journeys amid hostile political rhetoric.
Education
Understanding that knowledge dispels fear, we spoke at two events and hosted seven speakers. Our talks equipped them to counter the pseudoscience and misinformation weaponized against our community. We know that combating transphobia starts with understanding the long history of gender diversity and the deliberate campaigns to stigmatize difference.
Advocacy in Action
Working alongside coalition partners, PFLAG San Francisco supported pro-trans legislation, mobilized to protest the impact on healthcare for trans youth, and stood with trans youth at the Trans March. Our message was clear: trans rights are family values.
Looking Forward
The challenges ahead remain daunting. Anti-trans legislation continues to advance in many states. Misinformation spreads faster than facts.
Yet we move forward with unwavering conviction. Every parent who moves from fear to fierce advocacy, every young person who finds authentic expression, every community member who shifts from ignorance to allyship—these are the victories that sustain us.
Our mission has never been more urgent: to create a world where diversity is celebrated and all people are respected, valued, and affirmed. This work cannot be done alone. It requires each of us—families, allies, community organizations, and supporters like you—to stand together against hate and for love.
The attacks on trans people are attacks on all of us who believe in the fundamental dignity of every person. But if history has taught us anything, it’s that love wins when we refuse to be divided, when we show up for each other, and when we remember that our liberation is bound together.
Together, we rise.
Robert Costic
President, PFLAG San Francisco
