A Wave of Vandalism Is Targeting LGBTQ+ Spaces Across the U.S.
As attacks escalate from California to Colorado, LGBTQ+ communities are confronting a coordinated rise in hate.
When an anonymous vandal began targeting the LGBTQ+ youth resource center Mi SELA earlier this year, its staff spent weeks in denial about what was happening.
“This has been going on for a very long time,” Yesenia Mendoza, director of development and communications at Latino Equality Alliance, which operates the Southern California nonprofit in partnership with the Los Angeles LGBT Center, tells Queer Agenda. “We were so innocent-minded that we didn’t think it was a hate crime. That happens to a lot of people, where you rationalize negative things that occur in your life. We didn’t think it could happen to us.”
Since late May, an as-yet-unidentified assailant has been throwing dog feces at Mi SELA, which provides leadership development and support groups for LGBTQ+ youth in Bell, a city of 33,000 in greater Los Angeles. In just one evening alone, dozens of bright green bags filled with fecal matter were hurled onto its front awning and deposited on the sidewalk near the building’s entrance.
Staffers didn’t realize that the vandalism was a biased attack until Latino Equality Alliance posted a TikTok video raising awareness about the situation. The post rapidly went viral as people flooded the video with thousands of anti-LGBTQ+ comments. Trolls cheered the vandal on, asking for Mi SELA’s address so they could toss feces at the building, too. Scrolling through the hate directed at them, Mendoza says she came to a long-delayed realization: “Wait a minute, this is not normal.”
What made the attacks especially violating for Mi SELA is that it’s the only place many of the youth who rely on its services can be themselves. The majority of LGBTQ+ young people who visit its drop-in center each day are closeted in their daily lives, largely hailing from culturally conservative Latino households. They come to do homework, to watch Netflix, and — as Mendoza puts it — to “just vibe.”
“It made me afraid, not for myself but for the people that come in,” she says of the vandalism. “I never want them to feel unsafe or targeted in our community center.”
Mi SELA is one of numerous queer and allied spaces that have been vandalized during the second Trump administration. Since the president was sworn in this January, more than a dozen properties have been targeted seemingly for their support of LGBTQ+ people, including community centers, churches, businesses, and even public spaces. Those incidents, as sources tell Queer Agenda, highlight not merely the increasing scrutiny facing LGBTQ+ Americans under Trump but also the community’s continued resilience in the face of adversity.
Among the countless locales reportedly targeted in 2025, Sinners and Saints, a Washington, D.C. gay bar, had its glass front door shattered and a homophobic slur painted on the inside wall. The headquarters of Long Beach Pride in the California city of the same name were tagged with Nazi symbols and pro-Trump graffiti. A Pride display at BookWoman, a longtime feminist bookstore in Austin, Texas, was defaced when a vandal pitched a piece of concrete through its front window. In cities ranging from Appleton, Wisc. and Atlanta, to St. Paul, Minn., LGBTQ+ Pride flags have been torn down from city light poles and private homes.
Many of these altercations appear to be connected. In Stockton, Calif., three LGBTQ+ nonprofits were hit in one day, including the Central Valley Gender Health and Wellness Center, which provides harm reduction, HIV prevention, and peer support to queer people of color. A rock was thrown through the building’s front window during Pride month June, seemingly targeting a Trans Pride flag that was on display. This October, at least four different LGBTQ+ owned businesses in Denver all had their windows smashed during the same week, including a local gym, a salon, and a boutique that chose to remain anonymous in press coverage. Also hit was the Center on Colfax, Colorado’s largest LGBTQ+ community center.
Although the wave of attacks against Denver LGBTQ+ spaces drew national coverage, they were not a new phenomenon. John Taylor, the Center on Colfax’s vice president of development, says that a local gay bar reported being vandalized frequently in recent months. The vandalism is “especially violating,” Taylor adds, because Denver “feels like such a safe space for the queer community.” After Gov. Jared Polis (D) signed a 2023 law declaring Colorado a trans sanctuary, many families have fled to Denver from hostile states targeting gender-affirming health care for youth.
“It makes me really frustrated that we’re trying to make sure we have this safe space, and then feeling like, no matter what we do, something like this is still going to happen,” he tells Queer Agenda.
“We will not be erased. We’re not going to let it go. We’re not going to be distracted by a little bit of broken glass, but we’re also not going to drop the need for accountability. It’s not OK to do this.”
- John Taylor, Vice President of Development, Center on Colfax
Numerous allied spaces have likewise found themselves in the crosshairs, including LGBTQ+ affirming churches. In September, a vandal slashed a rainbow banner reading “All Are Welcome” at Indian Heights United Methodist Church in Overland Park, Kan. Rev. Fred Daley, a pastor at All Saints Catholic Church in Syracuse, N.Y., tells Queer Agenda that he has received at least three death threats since its Pride flag was torn down and burned in June. The vandalism was followed by an “explosion of hate mail to our parish, to our bishop, to our Catholic Diocese, many of them very violent, just based certainly on ignorance, but very, very hateful,” he says.
These faith centers, though, have chosen to defy the hate by continuing to signal their support for the LGBTQ+ community. When the entryway of Life in the City in Austin, Texas, was vandalized with the words “Pride is the First Sin” in July, the parish immediately went into action. Within hours, a community member designed a new mural to cover the vandalism: a pair of Progress Pride flags that now buttress the front entryway. And the very next weekend after its rainbow banner was defaced, All Saints held a public flag-raising ceremony to replace it.
“We just have to go forward,” Daley says. “All this negative and even violent reaction across the country, which is being fed by our present administration, is never going to win the day. You can step on a flower, but you can’t hold back the spring.”
For the team at Mi SELA, the vandalism they have faced is yet another reminder of how important the work they do is. Although many of the youth clients who seek out their services don’t have a great deal of support in their lives, having access to Mi SELA’s resources and programming helps them to be bolder in their identities. A young person who would come to the drop-in center to try on heels and experiment with makeup, Mendoza says, now performs drag at college. Even then, Mendoza saw how experiencing even a taste of freedom “lit up something in them, knowing that their identity is affirmed, and it’s not only affirmed, it’s celebrated.”
To ensure the space remains safe for years to come, Mi SELA recently installed high-quality security cameras to catch the vandal in the act, with the help of generous donations from the community. Security footage finally caught a glimpse of the perpetrator in October, although he has yet to be identified by local authorities.
While Mendoza is grateful that justice is closer to being served, she hopes this chapter is soon behind them so Mi SELA can focus solely on its mission: serving the vulnerable communities that rely on them to thrive. “I know that our community is resilient, but honestly, I have a weird relationship with the word resilient,” she says. “We have to go through hardship when we really shouldn’t, but this is not going to stop us. People can do whatever they want, but that doesn’t change who you are.”
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Excellent information! Thanks for getting the word out. I’ve benefited from the LGBTQ Center and all the services they provide. New to Substack!