Celebrating Pride for the LGBTQ+ Community and Their Food Security
Every June, we celebrate Pride Month as a way to honor the LGBTQ+ community and the advocates who fight for equality. Pride began as an act of resistance, a protest to fight for the dignity and respect all people deserve.
A key part of that fight is recognizing where we can do better in standing with LGBTQ+ people in the fight against hunger.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and other sexually and gender diverse (LGBTQ+) communities experience higher rates of food insecurity than their heterosexual and cisgender peers. During Pride Month, we celebrate the amazing contributions, resilience, and commitments of the LGBTQ+ community, but we must also rededicate ourselves to the anti-hunger advocacy necessary year-round to ensure that all people have access to the food they need to thrive.
An Exacerbated Hunger Crisis
America’s hunger crisis has reached new and historic proportions, with over 4 million people losing critical SNAP benefits in just the last year as a direct consequence of President Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill Act.” As we have seen time and again, when times are tough, those who are already vulnerable and marginalized are often hit hardest. Today, policymakers are dismantling food assistance programs while imposing severe and ongoing attacks that threaten the rights and lives of LGBTQ+ individuals.
It’s important to acknowledge that queer and transgender people have long struggled to access public benefits such as food assistance, and now they (and everyone else) are likely to become even more reliant on the over-stretched charitable sector. In many communities across the country, the charitable sector is dominated by communities of faith, and too often these communities are either truly or perceived to be hostile to the LGBTQ+ community. This can deepen isolation at the exact moment people most need support.
The severe and ongoing attacks threatening the rights and lives of LGBTQ+ youth, especially transgender and nonbinary youth, are unconscionable and are a driving force in MAZON’s focus to support transgender youth and their families. LGBTQ+ youth experience higher rates of hunger, homelessness, and suicide than their non-queer counterparts. The Trevor Project’s 2024 survey found that 40% of LGBTQ+ young people reported a history of food insecurity, homelessness, or unmet basic needs, and that transgender and nonbinary young people had a 77% greater chance of experiencing food insecurity compared to cisgender young people.
What Pride Calls the Jewish Community to Do
This is where Jewish values meet this moment.
MAZON’s work is grounded in b’tzelem Elohim: the belief that every person is created in the Divine image. Jewish institutions have long approached charitable work from a place of radical inclusion, an egalitarian, everyone-welcome ethic that is part of who we are. That heritage has always mattered. It matters more now.
When a particular group of people has been made more vulnerable by dangerous rhetoric and political action, our values do not soften in response. They call us to show up with more intention, more specificity, and more commitment to put our principles into daily practice.
Pride is a celebration of exactly that kind of showing up.
What MAZON is Doing
This past year, MAZON’s Board of Directors formally voted to prioritize hunger among transgender youth affirming a commitment to this community. That vote translates directly into how we set advocacy priorities, build coalitions, and direct resources.
Building partnerships with LGBTQ+ organizations and joining coalitions are key strategies of MAZON’s advocacy and allyship with the LGBTQ+ community. We are a longtime ally of the National LGBTQ Anti-Poverty Action Network, the only national coalition focused on LGBTQ+ poverty and hunger. MAZON is learning from LGBTQ+ and transgender youth advocates’ expertise and experience about the needs of transgender youth and their families and the barriers they face to safely accessing food and nutrition.
As a member of THRIVE: The Jewish Coalition to Defend Trans and LGBQ+ Youth, MAZON learns from synagogue leadership, members, and advocates about the importance of building solidarity and an advocacy movement. We are exploring a partnership with Keshet, a national advocacy organization fighting for equality in Jewish life, to bring cultural competency training to anti-hunger grassroots organizations interested in providing safe, welcoming, and affirming spaces and programs that serve trans youth and their families with dignity – especially those organizations operating from a Jewish lens, where we know our community will lead with our values of justice and dignity.
MAZON’s LGBTQ+ advocacy is deeply rooted in the fundamental Jewish belief b’tzelem Elohim, that all people are created in the Divine image, and that all LGBTQ+ communities, especially seniors and transgender youth and their families, have a right to a healthy and food secure future.
Protecting Food Access for All
If your synagogue, day school, or Jewish community organization runs a food pantry or charitable food distribution program, and if you want to explore what it means to make that program a safe and affirming space for transgender youth and their families, we want to hear from you.
The Jewish community has the values, the relationships, and the infrastructure to make a real difference for people who have been left with too few places to turn. That is something worth celebrating, and something worth acting on.
Reach out to us at Outreach@mazon.org to learn more.