Queer leaders and other politicos in San Francisco, including former ally Mayor Daniel Lurie, are blasting remarks congressional candidate Marie Hurabiell made on Monday about fellow candidate Scott Wiener, who is gay, saying they are homophobic.
In a 30-second video posted on X on May 4, Hurabiell bashed Wiener’s 2022 bill SB 357, which repealed a California law criminalizing “loitering with the intent to engage in prostitution.”
Wiener and the bill’s advocates argued that loitering was a vague, subjective crime that led to police profiling and disproportionately affected people of color, gay people, and trans people. The right, nationally, has long targeted the bill and used it to attack Wiener, saying it hamstrung police enforcement of sex crimes.
“Children are being raped multiple times a day, thanks to you,” said Hurabiell, who was a registered Republican until 2022 and a former Trump appointee. She accused Wiener of turning California into a “predator’s paradise.”
The statement from the city’s politicos said they were “deeply disturbed by a recent video from congressional candidate Marie Hurabiell, in which she falsely accuses Senator Scott Wiener, a gay man, of promoting child rape.”
“This is a familiar homophobic tactic with a long and ugly history,” the statement read. “For decades, LGBTQ+ people have been falsely linked to the sexual abuse of children.”
The statement called on San Francisco officials “to decline invitations to participate in events with her and her organization, ConnectedSF.”
Asked by Mission Local to respond to her remarks, Mayor Lurie, too, distanced himself from Hurabiell, whose group, Connected SF, endorsed him in the 2024 election.
Hurabiell was a mayoral ally, and Lurie attended two ConnectedSF events, including a fundraiser last November where he spoke about the city’s upward trajectory for a few minutes.
“I condemn this hateful message, and am deeply disappointed to see our politics devolve into these types of attacks,” Lurie said. “Unfortunately, this trope has been used to deny LGBTQ+ people their rights, livelihoods and dignity for a very long time. I stand with the LGBTQ+ community today and always in the fight against hate.”
Lurie did not distance himself from ConnectedSF, however, and did not say whether he would associate with Hurabiell or the group going forward; Hurabiell took a leave of absence from the group to run for Congress. His team confirmed he has not attended any of Hurabiell’s congressional events, and would not do so.
Hurabiell has a history of making transphobic comments, which has been public knowledge for years.
“Trans women are NOT women, regardless of your personal beliefs,” she posted on June 15 last year. “Science: DNA. Chromosomes. Body structure. They are human beings, and as such deserve the rights of any human, BUT they are not women. Women have XX chromosomes, a uterus, a vagina. Trans women have none of these.”
As recently as this February, she said, “Trans women are not women — you cannot change biology.”
Hurabiell, for her part, did not apologize for her recent remarks.
“This manufactured backlash is a bad faith deployment of identity politics,” Hurabiell said. “Anyone in law enforcement who is trying to rescue children who are being sex trafficked will tell you that Scott Wiener has made our California a sanctuary state for pimps and gangs.”
Lurie condemns erstwhile ally
Hurabiell was previously in Lurie’s orbit. The mayor and Board of Supervisors President Rafael Mandelman added a spot for ConnectedSF to their charter-reform task force, which had some 30 members.
Lurie’s staff also set up monthly meetings between Hurabiell and Han Zou, the mayor’s director of communications and public affairs, according to emails obtained by Mission Local.
“The mayor would like to plan on joining your one-on-ones with Han when he is able,” Chesna Foord, the mayor’s director of scheduling, wrote in one email.
“We have a positive collaborative relationship,” Hurabiell recently told the Bay Area Reporter. “I think he’s doing a great job putting San Francisco back on track.”
Wiener’s SB 357 has been under fire for years, and some California officials called for it to be repealed, saying that it has made it difficult to combat sex trafficking.
But, according to Wiener’s office, the state senator spoke with the San Francisco Police Department when crafting the bill, and the department told him it does not use the loitering law to go after sex trafficking.
“These people are not focused on actual statistics about effective law enforcement practices,” said Wiener’s communications director Erik Mebust.
Joe Arellano, Wiener’s campaign spokesperson, added: “San Francisco is a city that prides itself on its strong and vibrant LGBTQ+ community. By espousing these bigoted tropes, Marie Hurabiell is showing us that she’s just San Francisco’s Marjorie Taylor-Greene.”
Scott Wiener long in national right-wing crosshairs
Wiener has long been a target of abuse from right-wingers on the internet who accuse the gay 55-year-old state senator of pedophilia because he wrote SB 145. The 2020 law eliminated a difference in how straight and queer people were treated in California’s sex-offender registry.
Until SB 145, an adult having consensual sex with a child between the ages of 14 and 17 would not be registered as a sex offender if their age was within 10 years of the teenager — but only if the couple was opposite-sex. Now this is the case regardless of whether the couple is same-sex or opposite-sex.
The statement was signed by many of the city’s politicos, including leaders of the Harvey Milk LGBTQ Democratic Club, the Alice B. Toklas Democratic Club, school board members Phil Kim and Jaime Huling, and rival candidates for District 8 supervisor, including Gary McCoy, Manny Yekutiel, Michael Nguyen, Darshini Patel.
ConnectedSF is a well-funded pressure group that has set up neighborhood chapters to push its policies. It received $350,000 from Neighbors for a Better San Francisco in 2024, the latest year for which tax filings are available, which was the bulk of ConnectedSF’s $486,00 in revenue that year.
Hurabiell made $240,000 from the group that year.
This kind of homophobic and transphobic bigotry has no place in San Francisco and it’s appalling that Mayor Lurie has continually courted Hurabiell and her organization while she continues to attack LGBTQ San Franciscans with smears that sound like they’re coming from the likes of Nancy Mace.
Saying that women deserve our own separate spaces and sports is not transphobia. We fought for these things for decades. Weiner doesn’t care about women’s rights.
Saying “ trans women are not women” is the very definition of transphobia.
@Alice – Setting the Nancy Mace comparisons aside, her specific claim about SB-357 come directly from followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory. They swamped social media with “groomer” accusations and sent personal threats to Scott Wiener’s office.
This is the fearful, misinformed constituency that she’s trying to reach.
For clarification, Nancy Mace is a performative ahole and I’m a lifelong liberal. Transwomen are biological men and biological males do not belong in single-sex female spaces. Please stop gaslighting women and girls and forcing girls to share spaces (and prizes) with males. Stop framing women who object to males in female spaces as “phobic.” This is not a left v right issue. It’s about preserving female boundaries and rights.
Marie Hurabiell is a bigot who actively campaigns against infrastructure bonds, transit funding, and basic street safety. So what does that say about the people who take meetings with her?
I used to work for Child Protective Services (in another county). The fact is that most children are raped (repeatedly) by their cis-gender biological fathers.
screw that lady, but that rule? 10yrs older than a 15yr old is OK?? I’m sorry, but I’ve got a 15yr old son and if some person, guy or girl, decided to start having sex with him and they were TWENTY FIVE?? Sorry. That difference in age is just totally unacceptable. WTF are people thinking? Imagine going to highschool, then graduating college at 22, then working in a job for a few years…. then thinking, “hey, let me go back to the local highschool and see if I can hook up”. I don’t care if it’s gay or straight, that’s just Fing gross. At MOST I’d say 5yrs, but sheesh. yuck.
That’s not how the law works though. Previously, the law was discriminatory: if a 19-year-old man had sex with a 15-year-old girl, it would be up to a judge to decide if he was required to register as a sex offender for life after hearing arguments from both sides, but if a 19-year-old man had sex with a 15-year-old boy, registration was mandatory by law. It’s not about whether it’s “ok”—the act is still always a crime—but whether a judge could decide on this aspect of the sentence based on the facts of the case. SB 145 changed that to treat same-sex offenses the same as non. That’s a pretty small change, but but one that brings a bit more fairness to the system.
Yes, it is true, that because of Scott Wiener’s legislation, that it has made it more difficult for law enforcement to interdict prostitution and human trafficking operations. Many of those who are trafficked are underage. So yes, Scott Wiener has created a predator’s paradise. No, criticism of Scott Wiener is not homophobia. He hides behind that identity to shield himself from criticism. Smart people see through it.
If Chan succeeds in convincing Hurabiell voters to abandon the Republican, then does Chan expect for those voters to stay home, vote for her, for Chakrabarti or Wiener?
I’d wager they Hurabiell voters are more likely to hold their noses and vote for Wiener than vote for Chan or Chakrabarti. My read is that Chan is being run by the political class to divide the progressive vote to ease Wiener’s ascension, the member of the City Family in good standing that Chan is.
Saying women deserve privacy and our own sports is not transphobia. Women fought for these things for decades. Weiner is good on housing but terrible on women’s rights and protecting children. He authored all the bad legislation in California, including allowing male sex offenders in women’s prisons. Glad to see Marie telling the truth. Where’s Connie on these issues?
I’m no fan of Scott Wiener but these homophobs need to do two things: Grow up and get a life.
This is progressivism gone wrong. My friends and neighbors lived in a neighborhood where prostitution was rampant. Some of these women were trafficked underaged girls. Scott Weiner’s loitering protection laws made it hard for the police to do their job of protecting these women and the neighborhood from the bad impacts of having John’s driving constantly through the neighborhood, condoms on the side walks, and violence from pimps. I agree with Weiner 100% on housing but I will never vote for him— my experience of living in a neighborhood where his ill advised laws weakened the ability for law enforcement to keep our community safe (including the law making stealing under 900$ a misdemeanor) caused an enormous amount of stress and trauma for our families and our kids, not to mention the women (not all of them, but certainly a fair amount) who were being exploited.
I don’t see her comments as particularly bigoted to warrant that characterization.
Trans people deserve protection like every other person. Not a special class.
Pushing maximal wedge issues for a 1.5% constituency is done so intentionally.
That doesn’t mean anyone who disagrees with the 1.5% on xyz issue is a bigot.
She is known as “Horrible” for good reason.