A California mayor calls LGBTQ+ identities a 'choice of lifestyle'

Chen raised eyebrows after declaring April National Pickleball Month

By NICO LANG

TORRANCE, Calif. - This year was the first since 2014 that Torrance, a California city nestled in the southward sprawl of greater Los Angeles, did not issue a proclamation recognizing June as Pride Month.

The tradition began with Torrance’s former mayor, Patrick Furey, in 2014, but following his retirement last year, the newly elected George Chen broke with the custom by declining to put forth an official statement honoring Pride. Chen, whose views lean conservative, referred to LGBTQ+ identities as a “certain choice of lifestyle for some people” in comments shared with the local news publication Daily Breeze

“ I respect each person ’ s personal choice,” he said in a June interview. “ It does not rise to a proclamation.” His declaration that the LGBTQ+ community was not worthy of mayoral consideration particularly raised eyebrows after Chen issued a proclamation earlier this year declaring April as National Pickleball Month in Torrance.

Chen ’ s remarks have kicked off a wave of anti-LGBTQ+ controversies in the South Bay city whose comely beachfront and smooth weather have long been a boon to T.V. producers: The exteriors of Torrance High School famously stood in for Beverly Hills and Sunnydale in the ‘ 90s teen dramas 90210 and Buffy the Vampire Slayer , making the campus a popular pilgrimage for these shows’ passionate fanbases.

But for many in the surrounding LGBTQ+ community, the fallout has left them feeling as if they no longer have a place in the picturesque hamlet they call home. “ We don t have anyone to support us,” said Tiffany Garcia, who owns Torrance ’ s Black Raven Tattoo. “ We feel like the town from Footloose here. No one s allowed to dance. We ’ re just at a loss right now. We ’ re feeling really, utterly defeated.”

When it came to celebrating Pride in 2023, Torrance ’s LGBTQ+ citizens and their allies admittedly expected very little. Unlike neighboring areas like Hermosa Beach and Long Beach, the city has never raised the rainbow flag at city hall for Pride month.

Redondo Beach, which borders Torrance to the north, hoisted the Progress Pride Flag in a June 7 ceremony, marking a first for the tourist destination immortalized by punk progenitor Patti Smith in a 1975 track of the same name. “ Hate has no home here,” said Redondo Beach Mayor Bill Brand, who spoke at the event despite battling lung cancer and a brain tumor. “ We ’ re making history by raising this flag to start a new future in Redondo.”

But business owners in Torrance knew that they had to do something more this year after a string of vandalism incidents targeted Pride decorations in June 2022. Assailants repeatedly tore down rainbow streamers that had been wrapped around trees in the city ’ s prime commercial hub, and members of the Downtown Torrance Association (DTA) came up with a solution to prevent that from happening again.

Rather than placing the decorations where members of the public could easily reach them, the group designed 12 rainbow banners that read “ Downtown Torrance Pride” and hoped to hang them from light poles throughout the business district. “ We weren t even doing a whole Pride parade and going all out,” said Adam Schwartz, a member of the DTA and owner of the management firm Levy Living Legacy. “ We truly barely did anything. Banners felt like the least we could do.”

The DTA coordinated with members of Torrance ’s Community Development Department (CDD), which manages all municipal permits, on the displays for nearly a year, and Schwartz said that members of the CDD were optimistic and encouraging throughout those discussions. He said that local business leaders were told, over and over again, regarding the Pride banners: “ That ’ s a great idea! You just have to get permission.”

But on May 10, just three weeks before Pride was set to kickoff, city representatives informed businesses that the process of getting those permissions approved actually would be “ really complicated,” Schwartz said.

Although the displays were never officially Okayed, the DTA decided to hang them anyway. No one within the group thought there would be pushback: Signs advertising the annual Antique Street Fair had been hung on city light poles without a permit for 24 years, through five different mayoral administrations. The lack of proper paperwork never posed a problem before.

And yet sources said all that changed when the DTA decided to issue its own proclamation recognizing Pride month after the mayor refused to do so. Members of the DTA took turns reading aloud the statement, which was ratified unanimously by the 50 businesses that comprise the organization, during the public comment portion of the June 6 city council meeting. “ [T]he Downtown Torrance Association is proud to recognize the contributions of our community members and leaders who are LGBTQIA+ to the local arts, businesses, schools, government, and community organizations,” the proclamation stated. By the next morning, the Pride displays were gone.

Security cameras that Garcia mounted outside Black Raven Tattoo show city officials removing the Pride displays at 5:50am, around seven hours after the council meeting came to a close. The handful of banners were eventually returned to their owners, but when the DTA put them back up, they were met with a stern warning. In a meeting with the DTA, city representatives claimed that business owners could face misdemeanor charges if the displays weren ’ t removed by the end of the day.

Garcia, who opened her tattoo parlor in Torrance six years ago, said the threat felt personal to her as a queer woman who has faced discrimination throughout her life. “ I don ’ t honestly feel safe holding my wife ’ s hand, ” she said. “ When we got married, it wasn ’ t even legal in California. We had to fly to another state in order to get married. We couldn t have the majority of our friends or family there because they couldn ’ t afford to fly out. Straight people don ’ t understand the difficulties of what everyday life is like for the LGBTQ+ community.”

The banners, as ordered, were taken down within the day, to some outcry among Torrance residents. Part of the problem, as critics argued, is that the municipal leaders had not laid out clear guidelines for which kinds of banners would be eligible to display from city light poles or how residents would go about requesting to hoist them. Torrance itself owns 78 light poles in the downtown area, while the rest are the property of Southern California Edison (SCE), which limits banner displays to city and state flags or municipally sponsored events.

On June 20, the Torrance City Council met to debate the introduction of a clear policy on banner eligibility, and what was likely intended to be a tedious discussion regarding appropriate procedure quickly devolved into a circus of anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment.

Some speakers opposed to the DTA banners appeared to confuse the issue with Torrance itself flying a Pride flag at city hall, which was not being discussed. A woman with a black baseball cap pulled down over her eyes asked why the city wasn ’ t recognizing the contributions of its straight citizens or people of faith. “ Why is the heterosexual Pride flag not represented?” she asked. “ Why are we not flying the Christian flag? The Catholic flag?”

Another speaker claimed the Pride flag celebrates “ perverted men being perverted in lingerie” and claimed the debate is a slippery slope to “ people dressing up as horses” on Torrance ’ s streets. “ Pride isn ’ t good,” he said. “ You are going to invite that into our cities if we don ’ t keep our city safe now.”

Although Torrance council members clarified that only the banner policy was scheduled for consideration that evening, at least one member of the seven-person body felt that the issue of Pride flags should be raised: Councilman Aurelio Mattucci. In a rambling, six-minute speech, Mattucci said that recognizing the LGBTQ+ community could allow outside groups to take advantage, such as hate groups or maybe even clowns. “No matter what policies we put together under the um- brella of freedom of speech, anybody can really put up anything,” said Mattucci, widely viewed as the council ’s most conservative voice. “ I can put up flags with clown faces. Where do we draw the line?”

In a unanimous decision, the Torrance City Council voted that evening to limit city light poles to local, state, or federal banners, under the assertion that such a policy would be in line with SCE s own guidelines. This assertion neglects to consider that SCE is an outspoken supporter of LGBTQ+ equality.

In years past, its parent company, Edison International, has participated in both the Long Beach and Palm Springs Pride parades, and the national electric utility outfit signed onto a letter in 2019 urging passage of federal LGBTQ+ non-discrimination protections. Currently, Edison International enjoys a perfect 100 score on the Human Rights Campaign ’ s Corporate Equality Index , a significantly higher rating than Torrance itself.

Torrance is among the lowest scorers of any California city surveyed in HRC ’ s Municipal Equality Index: 58, ahead of only Fontana (52), Ontario (52), Brisbane (53), and Fresno (55). Nearly its entire score is a product of the fact that Torrance resides in one of the country s most progressive states, a longtime trailblazer in LGBTQ+ civil rights.

While a permanent decision has yet to be made on the future of Pride banners in Torrance, LGBTQ+ citizens said the debacle has been terrible for the local community s morale. Vandals began targeting bridges in the city with anti-LGBTQ+ graffiti after the mayor refused to issue a Pride proclamation, leaving messages that read “ Fuck Groomers,” “Fuck LGBTQ,” and “ Fuck Pride Month.” (Neither Chen nor the city council have issued a statement formally condemning the hateful epithets.)

Silas Quinn, a 32-year-old non-binary person, said that they moved away from Torrance as an adult in fear that it wasn ’ t safe for someone like them, but they came back last year for an apprenticeship at Black Raven Tattoo. They hoped things had changed. “ It ’ s frustrating for me to see that I ’ m still not really welcome,” they said. “I’ m still not really what Torrance wants to be a part of their community. I feel that a lot of people have stopped having a sense of politeness, and their true colors are really starting to show.”

But what frustrates many local business owners is that they feel the events of the past year aren ’ t reflective of the vibrant, inclusive community they know Torrance to be. Torrance has one of the most diverse populations of any California city, boasting the second-highest concentration of both Korean and Japanese Americans in the state (following Fullerton and Gardenia, respectively). Even after the myriad fiascos that have unfolded over the past year, many local businesses have continued to hang rainbow flags outside their shops or behind their storefront windows. “ This will not stop the Downtown Torrance Association from finding other ways to celebrate Pride,” said Isabel (Douvan) Schwartz, who was part of the team that co-authored the DTA ’ s Pride proclamation. “ Next year we will find another way to celebrate.”

City officials in Torrance did not respond to requests for comment on this story, although sources said that some council members have been working behind the scenes to move toward a compromise. During the June 20 meeting, Councilman Assam Sheikh urged his colleagues to table a resolution recognizing Pride month, adding that he hoped the gesture would send a “ message to the community that we all love you.” “Whatever you believe, you should be able to express that anywhere in this country,” he said at the time. “ That ’s the beauty of our country.”

But that recommendation was not heeded by June ’s end, which came and went without a statement from the mayor. At a prescheduled June 28 community meeting with Chen, critics expressed their displeasure with the city ’ s elected leadership. Whereas the prior week ’s council meeting was overwhelmed with conservatives citing Bible passages that allegedly proclaim LGBTQ+ people to be an abomination, this time nearly every person in attendance voiced support for the community. Eden Andrews, a 2o-year-old trans speaker, chided

Chen for what he said was the mayor s “ lack of compassion.” “That ’ s all we re asking for, Mr. George Chen, is respect,” said Andrews, who added that he and his girlfriend have been harassed walking down the street in Torrance and that he has had the word “ faggot ” written on his door. “ You can ’ t look at me and say that you respect us while saying that it is a lifestyle. It ’ s not just about putting up ribbons. It ’ s just because we are like you, and I ’ d say we all love the same, but it ’ s clearly not the case.”

The Torrance residents interviewed for this story remain optimistic that next year can be different, even as many other L.A.-adjacent cities likewise bear the brunt of discriminatory backlash. On June 6, three people were arrested following violent protests outside a board meeting of the Glendale Unified School District in the suburb of the same name, which voted in favor of a Pride month proclamation that very evening. Many of the communities that have experienced such incidents, like Torrance and Glendale, generally vote Democratically in statewide elections: Also last month, the Chino Valley UnifiedSchool District in Chino voted 4-1 to ban Pride flags from classrooms. The district ’ s schools are also mulling a policy that would force teachers and faculty to out trans students to their parents if they become aware that a young person does not identify with the sex they were assigned at birth.

Many critics of Chen ’ s decisions believe that Torrance can break the trends they ’ re seeing in cities across southern California by showing up to vote in the next election. Torrance suffers from low voter turnout in mayoral race: When Chen was elected in June 2022, he won by fewer than 3,000 votes. Less than 20,000 ballots were cast in total, in a city that ’ s home to over 143,000 people. That lack of engagement results in a sharply partisan split between local and federal elections: Torrance is represented by Maxine Waters and Ted Lieu, both liberal stalwarts, in the House of Representatives. Lieu, a straight ally, recently reintroduced a bill seeking a national ban on the discredited, harmful practice of conversion therapy on LGBTQ+ youth.

Ultimately, LGBTQ+ locals and members of Torrance ’s business community vowed to keep making their city a better place, with or without the help of their elected leaders. “I’ m seeing people in my community losing hope,” Adam Schwartz said. “ It’s destroyed people ’s trust in the city. A lot of people can hear this and go, ‘ Oh, Torrance is such a backward, bigoted place, ’ and that hurts everyone in Torrance. What I ve been hoping to do is show that even though city leadership does not accurately represent the actual community, our downtown community is willing to fight in terms of inclusivity and making everyone feel welcome.”