Scott Wiener was chased away from the San Francisco Trans March over his past support of Israel, marking the second time in less than a decade the lawmaker was forced out of the SF Pride kickoff event over his politics.
Video of the incident on Friday blew up on social media, racking up millions of views and landing in headlines in national media outlets.
Footage posted online show the state senator, who’s running to replace Nancy Pelosi in Congress, walking through Dolores Park amid a barrage of criticism. “It sucks because you’ve been wonderful … for trans people, and you’ve been terrible … on Gaza,” Dimitry Youkoushkin, a longstanding critic of Wiener, can be heard shouting at him in a video he posted on X.
Yakoushkin’s clip, which skyrocketed to just about 6 million views by late Saturday afternoon, shows the lawmaker walking through a crowd of people shouting “fuck you!” and throwing up middle fingers.
The next day, Wiener issued a statement saying he was “harassed, threatened, and physically intimidated” while on his way to a Pride Shabbat service linked to the Trans March. He said he left after the angry crowd made it “impossible for me to safely remain in the park.”
As a result, he said, Friday marked the first time in 22 years he didn’t participate in the march.
Trans March attendees have been known to dress down city officials before. Last year, Mayor Daniel Lurie was jeered and booed (opens in new tab) at the event. Video from 2025, also posted by Youkoushkin, shows attendees confronting the mayor and telling him he’s not wanted there.
Nearly a decade earlier, Mayor Ed Lee was booed during a speech (opens in new tab) at the march, while then-Supervisor Wiener was pressured into leaving before he had a turn at the mic. The backlash nine years ago stemmed partly from the two lawmakers’ policies on homelessness, which activists said criminalized queer and trans people, who are disproportionately homeless (opens in new tab).
Then-state Sen. Mark Leno was also forced off the stage that year because he supported Wiener’s bid to succeed him in District 11.
Wiener, who’s now facing Supervisor Connie Chan in the general election to fill Pelosi’s seat in Congress, has faced repeated backlash over his views, policies, and statements on Israel and Gaza from people on all sides of the political spectrum.
During a debate earlier this year, he hesitated to call the war in Gaza a “genocide” but changed his tune days later. Progressives slammed him for refusing to immediately condemn the Israeli government, but his statement a week later saying Israel’s actions “qualify as a genocide” led to him resigning as co-chair of the California Legislative Jewish Caucus.
In his statement on the Trans March backlash, Wiener mentions another incident earlier in the week when someone confronted him and his staff at a Mission bar while they were trying to watch a World Cup game.
Wiener said the man aggressively approached, “effectively cornering me and the young women staffers who were with me.” Then, “he screamed abuse at me and our staff before being ejected by the bar’s employees.”
The same man, Wiener said, stalked him on a plane in December 2023, shouting at him about his “tainted bloodline.”
Wiener has long faced death threats over his political stances. In 2022, police searched his home to verify a bomb threat. His congressional race webpage has a section called “Scott’s MAGA Fan Club,” detailing the critiques he’s garnered (opens in new tab) over the years from conservatives.
He said he doesn’t take issue with criticism, but that intimidation “crosses a line.”
“We’re living in a time when violence is all too often threatened or used against people in public life,” he said. “In San Francisco, we’re better than that.”
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