New Haven’s LGBTQ+ community center continues to hold strong as federal policy threatens the rights and liberties of queer people.
John Allen was a master’s student at Southern Connecticut State University on December 20, 1993, when the New Haven Board of Alders voted to establish a domestic partnership registry: a formal recognition of same-sex unions in the city. On the evening of the vote, anti-gay demonstrators were “revved up,” Allen said. Protesting against the registry, they yelled epithets, vandalized cars, and assaulted people outside City Hall.
The alders heeded the protesters’ calls and voted no. That night inspired Allen’s master’s thesis: an action plan to launch a safe, dedicated space for the city’s gay community. In November 1996, Allen opened the New Haven Gay and Lesbian Community Center.
More than thirty years later, Allen’s vision endures under a new name. The New Haven Pride Center dwells in a vibrant, airy home on Orange Street. A nonprofit with full-time staff, it offers a comprehensive suite of resources: a food pantry, legal and housing support, and affinity spaces. It is a vital part of a vast ecosystem of agencies and non-profits serving LGBTQ+ New Haveners.
Today, the Center holds its ground through the slew of federal threats to New Haven’s queer community.
On the first day of his second term, President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” It stipulated that the government will only recognize a person’s sex assigned at birth, regardless of their gender identity. Another order directed executive branch departments and agencies, such as the NIH, to ensure grant recipients did not provide gender-affirming care.
On a sunny afternoon in June, Laura Boccadoro ate frozen blueberries rescued from a torn bag sitting in the Pride Center’s food pantry. Boccadoro, the Pride Center’s operations director and longest-serving employee, wore her bleach-blond hair in a ponytail, revealing a neat undercut and brown roots.The week of Trump’s election, people “flooded” into the New Haven Pride Center in tears, Boccadoro recalled. Among them was the mother of a transgender boy.“
She was really concerned about him not being able to get his hormones and him not being able to get his top surgery,” Boccadero said. A week later, the mother came in “completely breaking down” and told Boccadoro that her son had attempted suicide.
Two weeks after Trump’s inauguration in January, the Pride Center hosted a community education night informing people about changes to LGBTQ+ policy. In July, the Center hired a full-time Social Services Coordinator to run a case management program, referring people to legal aid, housing assistance, and mental and physical health services.
Mallory Sanchez, a lawyer with the Center for Children’s Advocacy—a nonprofit firm and Pride Center partner— explained that since Trump’s second term began, anti-discrimination protections for queer youth have weakened.The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights in Boston, for instance, was one of six offices the Trump administration closed in March. The Boston office’s work oversaw cases in Connecticut, and its closure stripped the state’s students of a crucial avenue for recourse in civil rights violations. Now, when a school administration forbids students from using their chosen bathroom or fails to address instances of misgendering, students have to turn to the state’s Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities, which Sanchez said can take between one to three years to address complaints.
“How are they supposed to access their education when they can’t be themselves?” Sanchez asked, referring to the youth she serves. “How are they supposed to be affirmed in their identities when they’re being told by the federal government that they don’t exist?”
Each year since 2024, the city has allocated $30,000 for general expenses to the Pride Center. But local and state support alone cannot meet community members’ needs—especially now as federal cuts to programs such as Medicaid force states to revise their financial priorities.
To fill the gap, the Center increasingly relies on a patchwork of non-governmental support. The Pride Center regularly seeks grants from philanthropic partners such as the Fairfield-based Leonard Litz Foundation. It runs a food pantry in collaboration with Connecticut Foodshare and relies on sponsorships to put on larger events.In July, Yale New Haven Hospital announced it would stop providing hormone-based gender-affirming care for patients under 19. Historically, the hospital had been a major sponsor of theCenter’s New Haven Pride block party.Two days before the event in September, the Pride Center wrote on Facebook that it had returned the hospital’s funds, noting that while “this was not an easy financial decision, it was a necessary moral one.”
Yale New Haven Hospital’s cancellation of gender-affirming care deepens longstanding domestic tensions for minors who encounter resistance within their own homes. The Pride Center’sSupport Services Coordinator, Mike Sanger, said the “number one” issue in his case management work is housing insecurity—often a consequence of familial hostility when a child seeks gender-affirming care.
Sonimar Colón first approached the Pride Center in 2024 seeking legal assistance to gain custody of her toddler daughter, whom she had as a teenager.
Before coming to the Center, she had been homeless for about a year, spending time in a homeless shelter before moving into an apartment. Her parents were her daughter’s primary caregivers while sheworked to get back on her feet.
Colón, who is in her early twen-ties, is one of hundreds of thousands of American LGBTQ+ youth who have experienced homelessness or housing insecurity. A 2018 report by Chapin Hall found that queer youth are more than twice as likely to experience homeless-ness than their non-LGBTQ+ peers—a disparity driven by mental health strug-gles and family disapproval.
Encouraged by her partner, a transgender man already familiar with the Pride Center, Colón walked into the building in the spring of 2024.
She recalled Boccadoro pulling out “every single paper” that could help Colón’s case.
When I met her over a year later in June, Colón, aided by the Pride Center’s case management program, was in the midst of court proceedings over custody of her daughter. She was also working as an intern at the Pride Center, a welcome change from more mundane jobs at a barbershop and a Dunkin’. She appreciated seeing other queer staff members’ happiness amid a world she saw as increasingly hostile.
For the Center’s earliest patrons,today’s moment feels uniquely dangerous.“I don’t remember the same kind of vitriolic discussion that I see right now,” John Allen said. To him, the federal government advocates division and discrim-ination with that same vitriol.
Allen grew up in a period when it was illegal to be gay. The American Psychiatric Association listed homosexuality as a mental disorder until 1973. As he and his husband enter their retirement years, he wishes the political atmosphere were different.
“We should be enjoying our lives,” Allen said. “I think it’s much more violent right now. I never felt this sense of fear, like I do now.”
Even as policy changes threaten to undo much of the progress Allen’s generation fought for, an eager crop of leaders at the New Haven PrideCenter have stepped forward to carry on that work.“I always say, we can’t do this alone,” Boccadoro said. “If we want to be repre-entatives for our community, we have to show up fully.”∎
Sabrina Thaler is a sophomore in Benjamin Franklin College and an associate editor for The New Journal.
Photos by Sabrina Thaler.
