Taylor, San Francisco

Every LGBTQ homeless youth has their own story to tell. Taylor's story is just one of them. Together with the stories of other youth around the country, we can begin to learn more about the struggles LGBTQ Homeless youth face. But remember, no one person can represent an entire population. Nor, can a few videos tell the entire story of one individual. This was Taylor's story on 12/29/2011.


Video 1: Excerpts
Brief highlights from Taylor's interviews. Longer clips of the interviews can be found by topic below.


Video 2: How I Became Homeless
This is Taylor's story about leaving home in order to get hormones, living in unsafe conditions and ending up homeless in San Francisco. I included some information below the video that you may need to know to understand Taylor's story:


blood tests- before getting hormones, you have to undergo blood tests

master/slave relationship- a sexual relationship where two individuals have negotiated to role play a master and slave fantasy.

meal night- a program for LGBTQ youth at the San Francisco LGBT center

Lark-Inn - the city of San Francisco's only emergency shelter, run by the Larkin Street Youth Program

MSC South - a shelter in San Francisco's mission district that has a 24 hour drop in waiting room. It is rumored to be the roughest shelter in town.

SRO- a single room occupancy hotel room. This is San Francisco's method of getting homeless folk off the streets, that according to the Federal government is still considered homelessness. Most individuals in SRO's don't get their own tenants rights because the SRO's are leased by other organizations.

Video 2: Stereotypes of LGBTQ Homeless Youth
Taylor talks about: 1) runaways and throwaways; 2) suicide; 3) sex work; 4) bathrooms; 5) hate crimes; 6) police relations.

clockable - when someone can tell that you are trans it's sometimes called being "clocked"

Video 3: Message and Political Issues Important to LGBTQ Homeless Youth
Taylor talks about the main political needs for LGBTQ homeless youth and Taylor's message for other youth who may be watching.


Video 4: Vanguard Project
Taylor was one of the youth published in the first issue of Vanguard Revisited. Taylor reflects on the weekly Monday gatherings, how it helped the youth stay in touch and how it felt to work with pastors.

Introducing: Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries

Just Lutheran is funded in part by a grant from Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries (E-L-M). ELM has been providing financial support for Welcome since 2007 through our Grants program. Here's some information about this innovative Lutheran ministry:

ELM works to expand ministry opportunities for publicly-identified lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer Lutheran rostered leaders and seminarians who are changing the church and society through their ministry. ELM provides grants to LGBTQ rostered leaders and scholarships to LGBTQ seminarians; fosters community among these leaders through Proclaim, the professional community for publicly-identified LGBTQ Lutheran rostered leaders and seminarians; and supports LGBTQ Lutheran candidates for ministry.

These are ELM's primary programs:

Proclaim, the professional community for publicly identified LGBTQ Lutheran rostered leaders and seminarians. This community welcomes all who fit this criteria and who wish to join. Membership is on an annual basis and provides access to ELM grants, scholarships, an annual retreat, and community throughout the year.

Grants. Each year, ELM gives grants to ministry led by an LGBTQ person. ELM also names one or more Joel Workin Memorial Scholars each year. This award includes a $1,000 scholarship for education or candidacy expenses.

Candidacy Accompaniment.ELM operates a grassroots program of candidacy accompaniment to support LGBTQ people in Lutheran candidacy.

ELM is governed by a 12 person Board of Directors. ELM’s staff includes full-time Executive Director Amalia Vagts (based in Decorah, IA) and part-time Operations Coordinator Rachael Johnson (based in Chicago, IL). ELM is funded almost entirely through donations from individuals and congregations and is based in Chicago, IL. You can make a donation or learn more at www.elm.org.

CONTACT: Amalia Vagts; director@elm.org; 563-382-6277

SF Chronicle: Street Survivor Looks Out for Homeless LGBT Youth

Despite being a star student, Mia Tu Mutch is amazed she survived high school.

Facing bullying from her classmates, constant thoughts of suicide, rejection from her Southern Baptist parents, and the very real prospect of ending up permanently homeless, she clung to any reason to keep living.

"Every day I would say, 'I'm not going to kill myself today. I have a test tomorrow,' " Mia says.

Mia is transgender. She became homeless at a young age, but unlike most teens in her position, she was able to pull herself out of it.

Considering that she spent the better part of two years without reliable shelter, 20-year-old Mia has built a resume to make any trust-funded Ivy Leaguer blush.

She has toured the country to raise awareness of homophobic policies on college campuses. After being severely beaten near the 16th Street BART Station, she spearheaded a rally to reclaim the area as safe space for transgender people.

Now that she has secured an apartment, a steady income and a seat on the San Francisco Youth Commission, she is redoubling her efforts to battle the issue that affected her so deeply - LGBT youth homelessness.

Before stepping onto a public stage, Mia led a stifled existence in a small Southern town.

She began coming out as queer to close friends during her freshman year of high school. While she's been wearing women's clothing since junior high, she didn't begin identifying as transgender until after high school. "I feel like I've always been Mia Tu Mutch, even if I didn't have the name and the wig," she says. "Basically, the whole time that I was getting harassed it was because of my gender, not necessarily who I was having sex with."

She never intended to come out to her parents as queer, but their badgering made silence impossible. "My parents forced me out of the closet when I was 17," Mia says. "It was very confrontational, very dramatic and very scary."

Mia's parents enrolled her in their church's reparative therapy program. Mia cooperated, but chafed at the "pray-the-gay-away" sessions.

"The main reason I was staying was because they were holding college over my head," Mia says. With her solid grade-point average and high-ranking Key Club position, Mia would've been a shoo-in with college admissions officers.

"Then they told me, 'We're not giving you any money unless you act straight and act like a man.' So I was like, 'OK, well, I guess that means that I have to leave.' "

Mia lived at a friend's place an hour and a half away from school while completing her senior year. She hasn't spoken with her parents since.

A staggering number of LGBT youths share Mia's plight. As many as 40 percent of homeless youths identify as LGBT, according to the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force.

These youths experience a much higher rate of drug addiction, mental illness and sexual abuse than their heterosexual homeless peers.

Mia never succumbed to such lows, but when she came to San Francisco at 19 in search of a more accepting environment, she didn't quite find the sanctuary she was looking for. The stigma of her gender identity might have fallen away, but the pressure to conceal her homelessness took its place.

Mia made a point of looking as presentable as possible while attending classes at City College, fearing that her classmates might wonder where she had spent the previous night.

"I'm sure they had no idea that I was carrying a really big purse because all of my clothes were in there," she says. Hiding in plain sight, queer homeless youths often look just as fashionably put together as any yuppie loft dweller.

"It's hard to come out to friends as homeless," Mia says.

Finding work proved incredibly difficult during her transitioning process. After six months of job hunting, Mia finally found employment at a Goodwill pop-up in the Castro, the first store of its kind to be staffed entirely by transgender employees.

Through this position and persistent volunteering, Mia forged connections within San Francisco's LGBT service provider community. She then landed a job as a program assistant at the San Francisco LGBT Center, where she organized a weekly meal night for local homeless people age 24 and under. Now she works at Lyric, a queer youth center in the Castro.

Mia credits Larkin Street Youth Services for helping her when she was struggling to find housing.

Larkin is one of the few organizations that cater to the LGBT community. Queer youths are routinely mistreated at most shelters, where gender-segregated dorms and bathrooms can cause confusion. Shelter staffers, many of them religiously affiliated, often aren't prepared or willing to address the needs of transgender youths.

As a youth commissioner, Mia wants to make sure the city enforces LGBT sensitivity training at the shelters.

Sometimes Mia gets frustrated when important youth issues get drowned out by the storm of debate over hot-button topics like gay marriage.

"I get really annoyed by the hundreds of millions of dollars that both sides of Prop. 8 have spent," she says. "Trying to pass it, trying to repeal it, trying to get it unre-pealed. I think that everyone should be able to show their love in a way that's equitable, but when we have so many queer homeless youth, I don't think our highest priority should be a piece of paper from the government."

Mia thinks that the ultimate responsibility rests with the family when it comes to preventing queer youths from ending up on the streets. "There's still a lot of education that needs to be done working with parents," Mia says. "They need to know that kicking their child out because they're queer or trans should not be an option."

This article appeared on page E - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

New York Times: Transgendered and Homeless, Youth Struggles to Build a Life

By MERIBAH KNIGHT

Published: November 26, 2011 (reposted from this link)

Dressed in black baggy jeans, a gray tank top and a Harley Davidson cap skewed backward, Juan Gallaher stood under a cool late-fall drizzle devouring a peanut butter and jelly sandwich from the Night Ministry’s homeless-youth-outreach van at Belmont Avenue and Halsted Street.

John Konstantaras/Chicago News Cooperative

Juan Gallaher lost his apartment because he turned 21.

A nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization providing local coverage of Chicago and the surrounding area for The New York Times.

It was 8:30 p.m., and Mr. Gallaher was getting his first meal of the day. But he has gone so long and so often without food that hunger is now a faint feeling, he said, though he knows he needs to eat.

Three weeks earlier, he had turned 21. While that is a happy milestone for most young people, for Mr. Gallaher — a ward of the state since 2006 — it meant he was no longer eligible for services from the Illinois child welfare system. As a result, he lost his apartment and his subsidies.

“I’ve learned in my life that nothing is stable,” Mr. Gallaher said. So he focuses on the fundamentals: getting a free dinner and finding a place to sleep — maybe under a bridge, in an abandoned house or crowded with other homeless youths on the floor of a friend’s small apartment.

With a state unemployment rate of 10.1 percent, combined with a lack of affordable housing and shelter beds, an increase in homeless young people in Chicago is putting stress on an overburdened social-support system that is facing deep cuts in budgets and programs.

Advocates estimate that Chicago has up to 3,000 homeless youths in need of shelter on any given night. But there are just 209 youth shelter beds available citywide — only 5 percent of the approximately 4,000 in the city’s shelters. And with local youth shelters and drop-in centers turning away more young people than ever, providers said, young homeless people are left to navigate for themselves in a system created to meet the needs of adults.

Homeless youths are in need of nurturing, they are easy targets for crime and abuse, and some are prone to commit crimes. This makes the task of helping them costly and complex. Beyond basic housing, there is a need for services that can help them obtain an education and job skills that could help lead them toward society’s mainstream.

Mr. Gallaher also is a transgendered person, and a former ward of the state — both of which, studies show, make him far more likely to experience homelessness.

Experts say that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people make up a disproportionate number of the homeless youth; they represent as much as 40 percent of the national homeless population.

Many youths with gender-identity issues have been kicked out of their homes or have run away. In Chicago, most flock to Boystown, the magnet for young gay men and lesbians along Halsted Street on the North Side, looking for ad hoc family structures born of the street — street moms, street dads, nieces, nephews, brothers and sisters. Some even call themselves twins.

A History of Abuse

Mr. Gallaher, the second oldest of 11 children, likes to say he came from “a hole under a rock in the middle of nowhere.” Birth records show he was born in Duplin County, N.C., on Oct. 2, 1990, Paige Francis Gallaher.

He said he grew up homeless, sleeping in Dumpsters and trees with his older brother and his drug-addicted mother. His tales of abuse are harrowing: rape, beatings, forced prostitution. For years, Mr. Gallaher struggled with his gender identity. Though he was born female, he felt more comfortable wearing boys’ clothes, lifting weights and passing for male.

To Mr. Gallaher, a male identity was intrinsic. To his family it was “an abomination of nature,” he recalls his mother saying. Eventually they shut him out, and now he has no contact with his siblings or his mother.

Mr. Gallaher was sent to live with a relative in Illinois, but more abuse and more running away followed, he said. Eventually, records show, the state took custody and placed him in a group home. He bounced around living programs and, still a woman at age 19, gave birth to a daughter.

In 2010, under the care of the Howard Brown Health Center in Lakeview, Mr. Gallaher began taking hormone injections to make the transition from female to male. Every month he must somehow save the $35 it costs to continue taking them. On Nov. 23, 2010, he officially changed his name from Paige to Juan, records show. In February Mr. Gallaher gave up his daughter for adoption after child services was called when he left her in the care of a friend while he was in the hospital. Mr. Gallaher chose an open adoption, not wanting to place her in the child welfare system where he spent much of his youth.

As part of an independent living program, Mr. Gallaher lived in an apartment in Melrose Park. He loved the western suburb so much he named it Hope City. But after aging out of the child welfare system in October he lost the apartment — and was on the streets again.

Nearly 40 percent of youths who reach 21 and lose access to foster care experience some form of homelessness, according to a 2010 Midwest study by the Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago. Additionally, 2009 data show Illinois with more foster youths aging out than in previous years, up 1.2 percent, while nationally it has gone down by nearly half of 1 percent.

“As soon as you’re 21, all the support is gone,” said Amy Dworsky, a senior researcher at Chapin Hall. “We live in a place where there is a big shortage of affordable housing, and we know these young people are not earning significant amounts of money. Their options are limited.”

Chicago, with its big city allure and a continuum of services, attracts runaway and homeless youths. Yet as the population grows, state and federal cuts are hacking away at budgets for outreach organizations.

A survey released Monday by the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless reported that 55 percent of Illinois agencies administering homeless prevention grants said they would run out of money by Dec. 31. Last year, shelter programs in Illinois served 40,542 people, yet people were turned away 45,673 times because of insufficient resources, the survey said.

In the 2012 state budget, Gov. Pat Quinn approved $4.7 million in cuts, a 52 percent reduction of state outlays for shelters, emergency housing and transportation. Homeless advocates hope to persuade lawmakers to reverse the cuts Tuesday, the final day of this year’s legislative session.

“We want homeless youth to be heard. Too often they’re invisible,” said Anne Holcomb, a coordinator at the Night Ministry’s Open Door Shelter. “They’re even invisible when it comes to funding.”

Making It Work

For youths like Mr. Gallaher, the erosion of financing means he has less contact with social workers and spends more time wandering the streets, crashing on couches and fending for himself. He believes he is missing information about jobs, classes or other opportunities that might help him get on his feet.

Recently, sitting on a mattress on the floor at a friend’s apartment in West Pullman on the South Side, an area he and friends refer to as Ragtown, Mr. Gallaher recited his current motto: “This isn’t the life I want, but it’s the life I’ve got, and I can’t let the life I’ve got kill me before I get the life I want.”

Mr. Gallaher prides himself on his street savvy. The most prized of his few possessions — which include five decks of magic cards, a utility knife, a Dell computer and an MP3 player — is a fireproof briefcase containing labeled folders filled with resource pamphlets on transportation, housing, mental health, Internet cafes, jobs and food.

For Boystown’s homeless youth, Mr. Gallaher is a connector of sorts, a liaison between the services offered and the young people who need them. “If you need help,” he said, “you come to me. I’ll tell you where to go to get what you need.”

But that is getting harder, and Mr. Gallaher can make fewer referrals these days. “With all the budget cuts, there is not as much programming now,” Mr. Gallaher said. “It’s a lot different.”

On Nov. 16, Mr. Gallaher scraped together enough money to take out his partner — who goes by the name Genesis and like many homeless youths declines to give his full name — to celebrate his 20th birthday at Castle Buffet at Belmont and Kimball. Inside, Genesis, Mr. Gallaher and his two “nephews” declared an eating contest. They piled plates high with fried shrimp, pizza, stir-fry and sweet buns, and ate French fries with chopsticks. Laughing, they set napkins on fire so Genesis could blow them out to make a wish.

They talked about going to Hope City after dinner, but wound up in Boystown, wandering along Halsted Street and goofing off. Passers-by glared. Some crossed the street.

But it was too cold to walk all night, and it was too late to get into a nearby shelter. They would head back to the West Pullman apartment.

Hope City would have to wait.

“Tomorrow,” said Mr. Gallaher as he walked toward the train, his MP3 player piping Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” into his earphones. “Tomorrow we’ll go to Hope City.”

Thank You: SF CARE

A big thank you to our friends at SF CARE for awarding Welcome an $8,000 grant to support the mentoring aspect of our project. Specifically, Welcome will:

1) coordinate a monthly training and support group to provide feedback, professional oversight and mentoring opportunities for volunteers working with the homeless in San Francisco. This support group will also train and support a new group of mentors who will support LGBTQ homeless youth. (2011-2013)

2) create interactive multimedia trainings and classes featuring the collaborating partners in SF CARE. Talks on deep listening, ethical boundaries, deescalating conflicts, basic training on supporting individuals with chronic mental health issues and the laws and history of homelessness in San Francisco will be taught by the Revs. Megan Rohrer, Dawn Roginski, Lyle Beckmen, Dan Solberg and Valerie McEntee.



SF CARE is a collaboration of St. Paulus Lutheran Church, Night Ministry and Welcome, faithful organizations who are working together in order to increase our ability to help the underserved in San Francisco. We are particularly passionate about providing opportunities, resources and support for individuals who are poor, homeless, formerly homeless and experiencing mental health or brain disorder issues.

CARE stands for Compassion, Advocacy, Resilience and Education



St. Paulus Lutheran Church: We seek to be an inclusive community of God’s diverse people, visible in the world. Like Jesus, we: Care about one another and all creation, Honor the poor, Tell the truth to ourselves and others in love, Encourage justice and show mercy.



The San Francisco Night Ministry provides middle-of-the-night compassionate non-judgmental pastoral care, counseling, referral and crisis intervention to anyone in any kind of distress. Through our Crisis Telephone Line staffed by trained volunteer Crisis Line Counselors; and through person-to-person encounters with ordained clergy on the streets, this ministry is available every night of the year from 10:00 pm - 4:00 am.


Welcome seeks to provide a faithful response to poverty and to improve the quality of life for individuals in our community by providing: hospitality; education; food; and referrals for housing, health care and drug and alcohol treatment. Programs: Welcome Center, Project Faith Connect, Vanguard Revisited, Somatic Trauma Care, Saturday Community Dinners, Urban Share Community Gardening, and The Free Farm

Thank You: Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries

A big thank you to Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries (ELM) for their $9,000 grant to Welcome and CLGS for the LGBTQ Homeless Youth Leadership Project.

This Mission grant will fund a ministry that serves LGBTQ homeless youth through empowerment and fostering leadership. This ministry will also bring attention to their issues and bring in people of faith to provide support to LGBTQ youth. Specifically, the grant will allow the Revs. Megan Rohrer and Dawn Roginski to serve this vulnerable population and enable them to encourage those with gifts for ministry to pursue seminary.

ELM Grants
Since 1995,ELM has given away grants each year to support ministry by LGBTQ Lutheran rostered leaders. ELM awarded $62,000 in grants to five ministries in 2011. The grant recipients are selected by the Grants program team, led by Margaret Moreland. Through this program, ELM donors support diverse ministries and congregations led by publicly-identified LGBTQ rostered leaders. ELM donors have given away over $850,000 to ministry since the program began.

Learn more at: Extraordinary Lutheran Ministries Website

Leaders: Rev. Dawn Roginski and CLGS

The Rev. Dawn Roginski is currently a Doctorate of Ministry candidate at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkely. With a psychology degree from the University of Minnesota and an M.A. in Counseling Psychology from St. Mary’s University of Minnesota. Dawn was promoted to program director at a residential treatment facility for seriously mentally ill patients at Boston Health Care in Minneapolis. After nearly 10 years of full-time employment at Boston Health Care, Dawn decided to go seminary.

In 2003, Dawn became a part-time chaplain and part-time youth care worker at a residential treatment center for children in Kansas City, MO, providing care for seriously emotionally disturbed children and youth. Dawn developed a youth ministry program from the ground up, including groups and worship. As her programs grew, she was offered the position of full-time chaplain.

Dawn was ordained as a pastor while serving at St. Francis Lutheran Church in San Francisco and currently serves as Associate Coordinator with a call from the Sierra Pacific Synod at CLGS's Bay Area Coalition of Welcoming Congregations.

Leaders: Rev. Megan Rohrer and Welcome

The Rev. Megan Rohrer, is a nationally recognized LGBTQ faith leader, historian, writer, homeless advocate, community organizer and speaker. The first openly transgender pastor ordained in the Lutheran church and called by four Lutheran and one Episcopal churches, Megan serves as a missionary to he homeless in San Francisco as the Executive Director of Welcome. Working at Welcome since 2002, Megan has three years of training in using somatic care to heal Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and uses these methods of healing trauma in all the programs Megan develops to work with homeless individuals. Megan is also the Growing Home Community Garden Manager at Project Homeless Connect and founded SF Refresh, a series of citywide events that provide free whole body health care in community garden settings that is funded by the Mental Health Services Act in collaboration with the SF Department of Public Health. Recently awarded an honorary doctorate from Palo Alto University, Megan spoke at the 2011 National Conference on Ending Homelessness on a panel entitled: "LGBTQ Youth: Improving Our Responses and Gaining Community Support," won Out History's Since Stonewall Local Histories Competition with an exhibit on the history of trans male mentoring in San Francisco, is the co-editor of Letters For Our Brothers: Transitional Wisdom in Retrospect and is a contributing advocacy blogger for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

Welcome, specializes in listening to the needs of the homeless and hungry, creating innovative programming that creatively engages local communities and faith based organizations to respond to poverty and educating groups around the country about how they can replicate our programs. Our recent projects, the Urban Share Community Gardening Project and Vanguard Revisited have gained attention across the country, been replicated often, received lots of media attention and have been highlighted at HRC's Clergy Call, the National Conference to End Homelessness, the National History Association, the National Queer Arts Festival and both the SF Pride and Trans marches.

Our Vanguard Revisited Project worked with the GLBT Historical Society, Larkin Street Youth Services, the Faithful Fools Street Ministry and the LGBT Center's Youth Program to utilize the local history of GLBT homeless youth from the 1960's to empower, inspire and provide creative outlets for youth to advocate and share their experiences. The project created a magazine, an online exhibit and a national speaking tour that worked with faith groups and LGBT homeless youth living in emergency shelters. Additionally, the project resulted in a youth lead Sleep-In Rally that brought attention to the needs of homeless youth in San Francisco and taught leadership, communication and political skills to the youth, enabling them to voice their needs to local leaders.