Two women sit on a bed, a Pride flag hanging behind them. One is nervous; the other tells her to be calm and that she’ll do “all the work.” The music swells. The two hold hands and —  fill out a ballot voting for Steve Hilton? 

This is the new advertisement from the Hilton gubernatorial campaign that is drawing rebuke from both sides of the aisle, but for very different reasons. 

Jorge Reyes Salinas, the communications director at Equality California, said the ad was an insult to the queer community. 

“This ad is a disgusting attempt to exploit lesbian intimacy for political attention,” he said. The advertisement plays on media tropes that Salinas says “reduce lesbian and bisexual women … to sexual entertainment,” rather than showing them as well-rounded characters. “Any group of the LGBTQ+ community deserves the same dignity and respect as everyone else,” he said. 

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The ad is truly hyper-sexualized. It ends with one woman telling the other, “Now lick it.” The two pause and stare before she reveals an envelope to send the ballot, and large text pops up saying, “Just try it!”  

Salinas characterized the ad as a desperate attempt to get attention from a candidate who is trailing far behind in the polls in heavily Democratic California. The Democratic candidate Xavier Becerra, who is endorsed by Equality California, holds a 25-point lead over Hilton according to recent polling by the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies. 

Conservatives have also criticized the ad.

Influential evangelical Pastor Jack Hibbs thought the ad was distasteful and said, “lesbianism among college girls and some high school girls that right now is an actual pandemic of social ill.” Republican attorney general candidate Michael Gates said it undermines “the sanctity of the relationship between parents and their children.” This criticism is rather confusing because although the ad features two relatively young women, they both appear to be adults, not minors. 

“The comments from Pastor Jack Hibbs should be criticized because there is nothing wrong with two women being attracted to each other,” Salinas said. “We’re calling out the ad’s stereotypes, while also rejecting the homophobia in the response to it … by other Republicans.” 

The backlash from Hilton’s own party and supporters shows that an advertisement full of queer innuendo was ill-considered, considering the national GOP’s attacks on LGBTQ people in recent years. Hilton himself has been campaigning against transgender girls and women competing in school sports and using locker rooms that correspond with their gender identity. This context might be why Hilton’s political base responded to the ad just as poorly as the liberal voters he was attempting to court. 

Hilton says the ad is part of a new series rolling out before Election Day, showing stereotypical California liberal archetypes voting for Hilton. He claims these ads are authentically filmed with real actors, as opposed to being A.I. generated, like many of his previous ads. One other advertisement has been released so far by the campaign showing a man at a spiritual retreat also being swayed to vote for Hilton, although it is notably absent of sexual innuendo.

Caleb Kaufman is a California Local News Fellow placed with the Los Angeles Blade. The California Local News Fellowship is a state-funded initiative to support and strengthen local news reporting. Learn more about it at fellowships.journalism.berkeley.edu/cafellows.

Last week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed and vetoed a slew of bills into state law. Among them were seven pertaining to California’s LGBTQ community. Newsom signed six while vetoing one. His actions drew applause and scorn from advocacy groups in the state. 

The six signed bills:

Assembly Bill 1775 allows transgender veterans, who were banned from service last year by the Trump-Vance administration, to access housing assistance, use California’s discharge upgrade assistance program, and get support for gaining employment. 

Assembly Bill 1930 strengthens privacy protections for healthcare patients and providers by creating clear guidelines for California agencies, individuals, and corporations to respond to out-of-state subpoena requests relating to abortion or gender-affirming care. This includes a requirement to contact the California Attorney General at least seven days prior to responding to the subpoena or providing legal documents. This should add additional protection to those residing in California from investigations in states where abortion or gender-affirming care has more restrictions. 

Senate Bill 934 targets conversion therapy in California and increases the amount of time a patient has to bring a medical malpractice lawsuit against a provider for attempting to change the patient’s sexual orientation or gender identity. The bill takes aim at the widely debunked practice that treats queerness as a mental disorder that could be cured through psychotherapeutic methods. Conversion therapy has been illegal in California since 2012; however, a recent Supreme Court decision threw the ban into question, prompting lawmakers to write this new bill that legally defines it as medical malpractice. 

Senate Bill 1023 expands access to PrEP, a medication that protects people from contracting HIV. The bill requires insurers to cover the drug through the medical benefit and the pharmacy benefit pathways, allowing for more providers to give patients PrEP. 

Senate Bill 1114 strengthens privacy protections for voluntary self-identification data about sexual orientation and gender identity. The bill limits when California government agencies can share this data and bars it from being disclosed outside of the state government, with few exceptions. 

Senate Bill 1328 expands support for LGBTQ students and staff in California colleges. The bill requires any institution of higher education to designate an employee at any campus, satellite campus, branch campus, or outreach center to support the needs of LGBTQ individuals. 

Equality California, the largest statewide LGBTQ civil rights group in the country, commended the governor for his support of legislation that protects and supports the queer community amid escalating threats, attacks, and rollbacks from the federal government. 

Executive Director Tony Hoang said in a written statement, “California is once again demonstrating that when LGBTQ+ people are targeted, our state will respond with action,” adding, “We are grateful to Gov. Newsom for signing these measures.”

The vetoed bill:

Assembly Bill 2164 would have banned California from extraditing anyone residing in California for providing abortions or gender-affirming care in another state. Newsom vetoed this bill despite agreeing with its principles, claiming in a written statement that “extradition is an exclusively executive function” and that he did not want to limit the “executive authority of an incoming governor.” 

This bill was created in response to Louisiana’s attempt to extradite a California physician for allegedly sending abortion pills in the mail to a Louisiana woman. Newsom responded forcefully to the extradition request, publicly denying it and stating, “We will not allow extremist politicians from other states to reach into California and try to punish doctors based on allegations that they provided reproductive health care services.” 

In a written statement responding to the veto, Lizzy Hinkley, the legal director of the bill’s lead sponsor, Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, criticized Newsom, stating, “[the] outgoing governor’s principled stance is cold comfort to Californians living and working in the real world post-Dobbs. A high-brow, academic justification for refusing to codify legal protections only reveals an ignorance for the lived reality of patients and providers — and does nothing to help them.” 

LGBTQ people have a variety of housing options when they’re lucky enough to be able to afford property. In San Francisco – long considered a safe haven for the queer community – individual needs have to be weighed both against the city’s chronic housing shortage and a competitive but often lucrative job market.

After a lull of several years, the city’s real estate market has heated up in recent months, driven by the city’s economic recovery post-COVID lockdowns and the artificial intelligence boom.

For Rick Page, 68, and Anthony Farace, 57, both gay men, the job market was a top reason to move back to the city after they’d left the Bay Area five years ago.

Page said the couple had left behind a “huge home in a town called Oakhurst, on the way to Yosemite.” When moving back to San Francisco they wanted to balance suburban and downtown vibes, Farace said, leading them to settle in Diamond Heights, a tiny neighborhood built atop three hills above Noe Valley, that has suburban sensibilities but isn’t too far from downtown.

“In the summer it’s a little foggy but it’s nicer up here the rest of the time, and where it felt like you aren’t downtown where it’s just concrete and buildings,” Farace said. 

Added Page, “It sounds goofy, but if there’s a tsunami, it won’t get all the way up here.”

Page said that in the spring the couple initially bought a relatively small studio in Diamond Heights. But they found that it didn’t meet their needs and purchased a second studio unit nearby that did. They closed on the larger condo unit in October.

“It just didn’t have any kind of patio or outdoor thing for the dog,” Page said of their first studio, “so we saw something upgraded with a kitchen redone, nice hardwood floors, a fireplace, a sunny patio, so it was much nicer. We bought that one, now we have to figure out what to do with the first one.”

The first unit was $450,000 and the second $520,000, they stated.

The couple also mentioned a lack of some of the downtown, South of Market, and Mission District street disorder that garnered negative headlines in the past several years. The couple also noted that Diamond Heights is more affordable than traditionally high-priced Russian Hill, which is closer to downtown. 

Nevertheless, “The employment, the social life is better” in San Francisco, Page added. 

Federal data shows many LGBTQ people want to own a home.

Fannie Mae, the government sponsored enterprise that buys home loans, does have some LGBT data, according to research from 2023 that was published in 2024. The data is the result of sexual orientation and gender identity identifiers in the National Housing Survey. It did not ask about queer representation.

According to the report, 8.6% of respondents identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender – similar to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey. The survey included responses from a weighted total of 12,363 people 18 years and older, with a weighted total of 1,059 identifying as LGBT.

The research found the LGBT homeownership rate to be 46%, which is much lower than the overall U.S. homeownership rate of 65%.

The latest available data from The Urban Institute reveals that the homeownership rate for individuals identifying as LGBTQ+ stands at 51%, in contrast to 71% for those who identify as both straight and cisgender. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, at least 1.3 million same-sex couples reside in the U.S., meaning a significant number of LGBTQ people in this country do not own their own homes.

In San Francisco, the Diamond Heights neighborhood is just a half-hour walk from the Castro, and even shorter on the bus. 

Charlie Mader is a gay man who has been a Realtor in San Francisco for “just under 25 years,” with a particular emphasis on Diamond Heights, the Castro, and Noe Valley. He said that while many LGBTQ people want to live relatively close to a queer neighborhood, such as the Castro, “It’s not like it used to be.”

Even in spite of a recent backlash to LGBTQ equality in the mid-2020s, leading to a number of federal policies largely targeting transgender and gender-nonconforming people, Mader said that since marriage equality, “You hear ‘There’s no need for us to live together in a gay ghetto,’ and we’re interspersed throughout the community and the country.”

Marriage equality became legal in California in June 2013, two years before the U.S. Supreme Court made same-sex unions legal nationwide in 2015.

Mader said marriage equality helped incentivize more LGBTQ home-buying due to an old Clinton administration tax law that gave married couples favorable tax incentives versus single homebuyers. 

But even within the City-by-the-Bay, the distinction between neighborhoods is not as stark.

“I hear the Mission is just as gay as the Castro is, and the food is better,” Mader said. “I can’t argue with that.”

Angel Carney, a lesbian Realtor, has also been in the Castro area for decades. She said the threshold of home ownership there has risen dramatically. 

“When I first started,” which was in 2002, she said, “I had teachers, I had nurses, I had a doctor … It was diverse in terms of who was buying. Everybody had a way to get into the market.”

Now, “with tech, they blew out everybody,” she added, saying first-time homebuyers are sometimes competing with tech employees making six-figure salaries from their early 20s due to their economic opportunities.

Carney said that even so, “It’s mostly a two-income household who’s buying in the Castro,” largely people in their 30s.

“LGBTQ is more of a rarity,” she added. “I’ve seen more non-LGBTQ, I would say, couples buying in the Castro.”

One reason is because while it is such an iconic epicenter of the LGBTQ community, it is “definitely a transit hub, and it’s geographically central, so if you work on the Peninsula, you go over Diamond Street and you’re on [Highway] 280. You can get to BART, to the airport, it definitely is transit centric for work, for traveling, if you’re a tech worker.”

Understanding that unhoused people are often part of San Francisco neighborhoods such as the Castro is also a factor, Mader said. 

“Because gays are so tolerant, it draws a magnet for people who you know are distressed and so you see more antisocial behavior, begging on the street, people just getting high because they know they can get away with it,” he said. That can impact people’s desire to buy a forever home in one neighborhood or another.

Indeed, the Castro has experienced fewer open-air drug scenes than other parts of the city, such as Sixth Street or the Civic Center Plaza, which are both near the downtown core. Such activity has, however, remained a persistent complaint of Castro merchants. In early December, Sophie Marie, a legislative aide to gay Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman, who represents the neighborhood as District 8 supervisor, noted that “a lot” of unhoused people have recently moved into the Castro as they leave South of Market and Civic Center amid an increase in law enforcement activity and attention from city government there.

The Castro is among those neighborhoods seeing building height limits increased as a result of Mayor Daniel Lurie’s family zoning plan that, after much rancor, passed the Board of Supervisors for the final time on December 9. The plan is intended to increase the city’s housing stock to meet state housing goals.

San Francisco’s median home sale price rose nearly 6% to $1.85 million, its highest amount since 2022, earlier this year, as the San Francisco Standard reported.  

Mader said that nonetheless, “There are empty condos everywhere for sale,” and that market is down 20% from its peak.

“Right now I’m selling for $625,000 – I’ve sold for $100,000 more than that,” Mader noted.

Carney agreed that condos are very available right now.

“If you’re thinking about entering the market, think about condos,” she advised. “When interest rates go down, prices will go up, so get in now on a condo. People say they’re waiting for the market to drop – well, the market dropped on condos. Those are a great buy right now.”

The Fannie Mae data showed that homeownership aspirations are high among LGBT consumers, with 83% saying they “would like to buy at some point” or “continue to own,” the report stated. This share is comparable to non-LGBT consumers, the report stated. LGBT consumers also believe there are more obstacles to owning a home than their non-LGBT peers.

Those obstacles include that over 70% of LGBT respondents said it was difficult to get a home mortgage today, compared to only 55% of non-LGBT respondents, according to the research. LGBT consumers were more concerned about closing costs, credit score or history, current debt, and insufficient income for monthly payments.

The Federal Reserve on December 10 lowered interest rates for the third time this year. The recent reduction was by a quarter of a percentage point, as the New York Times reported. The new range is between 3.25% to 3.75%. But CNBC noted that mortgage rates may remain higher because they are less impacted by the Fed. The average rate for a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage is currently about 6.35%, the network reported December 10.

Nationally, the real estate market is dealing with the same uncertainty as the rest of the economy, now almost one year into President Donald Trump’s second term.

“Everyone is afraid of another Trump recession,” Mader said. “People are not buying houses especially in places like Florida, where they’re having all kinds of issues with insurance.”
Florida is the nation’s most expensive state for home insurance due to natural disasters like hurricanes. 

California is also experiencing insurance issues, particularly in areas prone to wildfires, as the San Francisco Chronicle reported. Most of the Bay Area is not as affected as other parts of the state, though insurance premiums are rising for home insurance.

Not everyone wants to live in a big city. 

Mark Kliem, who’s part of the LGBTQ Real Estate Alliance, focuses on the North Bay, encompassing Solano, Napa, and Sonoma counties. 

“Consumers can contact the alliance no matter where they live and connect with the nearest LGBTQ agent close to their area whether they are buyers or sellers,” Kliem, who is gay, said.
Kliem lives in the Solano County city of Vallejo, where the real estate market took a dive during the Great Recession.

“A lot of investors swooped in and bought up as many of those places as they could, so there was a lot of investing in property through that, and a lot of flippers,” he said, referring to people who buy a property, fix it up, and then sell it for a profit.

Now, the area is one of the country’s hottest real estate markets, he said, because it’s near San Francisco, has warmer weather and is more affordable long-term.

“It’s a good place location wise – we’re on a bay, we have a ferry service to downtown San Francisco. We don’t have BART, so it’s a little problematic to get to the nearest BART, but our weather gets even warmer, less fog, than Oakland. Throughout the year, it’s a five-degree difference from San Francisco.”

Ultimately, the Golden State and the Bay Area in particular are poised to remain competitive for buyers of all sexual orientations and gender identity – despite the fact that that leads to so many barriers to entry. Gay Realtor Anthony Waite, 30, explained why.

“A lot of people who moved to Austin, Texas [during the COVID pandemic lockdowns] said there’s not a lot to do,” Waite said. “In San Francisco, you could find something to do every single corner every hour, day and night. Texas doesn’t offer that.”

(Editor’s note: This article was originally published by the Bay Area Reporter and is part of a national initiative exploring how geography, policy, and local conditions influence access to opportunity. Find more stories at economicopportunitylab.com .)