Activists from Protect Trans Futures arrived early to picket the Fenway Health Gala on Friday, November 14. Fenway Health’s Gala is an annual charity affair to raise funds for the Boston based LGBTQ+ focused community health center.
Guests in long coats against the cold Boston November evening walked passed picketers chanting for hormone replacement therapy “safe, free, and on demand” in front of the SoWa Power Station, lit with rainbow lights for the event. The picketers were there to protest Fenway’s decision to end gender affirming care for patients under 19. However the biggest disruptions were yet to come, with activists using tactics inspired by an earlier generation of activists protesting over HIV and AIDS.
Once inside, the coats came off to reveal a well-heeled, predominantly older male crowd, many in fun ties or patterned shirts. On the auction table paintings by local artists shared space with a Xyrtex sperm donation discount and gift basket ($300 starting bid,$600 total value).
The Gala billed itself as a night of joy and an opportunity to help LGBTQ+ people facing extreme pressure from the Trump administration. “Your presence fuels more than a night of celebration—it fuels a movement,” the event website states. “Together, we will carry forward Fenway Health’s mission to provide affirming care, drive groundbreaking research, and lead on justice-centered advocacy for all.”
But affirming care is no longer being provided to every Fenway patient who needs it. While youth care remains legal and protected under Massachusetts law, the center has bowed to pressure from the federal government, a major source of its funding. The contradiction between Fenway’s rhetoric of advocacy and its decision to end care for certain patients exemplifies what many community members view as a betrayal.
“You come to Massachusetts, you come to Boston, because of the promises that are being made of a sanctuary city for LGBT people,” Teddy Walker, an organizer of Friday’s protest, said in an interview with Assigned Media. Fenway’s decision to withdraw care “represents a big broken promise to the community,” they explained.
For Fenway Health, the economic realities of providing high quality LGBTQ+ focused health care collided with national politics under the second Trump administration. The organization reportedly receives approximately $20 million in federal funding, and according to Fenway’s most recent financial disclosures, this represents their single largest source of funding outside of patient service revenue. Under Trump, the agency overseeing healthcare grants has stated that they will deprioritize funding for organizations that provide youth with gender affirming treatments, citing a politicized HHS report crafted to reach the opposite conclusion on youth care of every major medical organization.
The tension between Fenway as a champion of LGBTQ+ healthcare and their decision to end care for some patients was acknowledged by several of the evening’s speakers, and addressed head on by CEO Jordina Shanks. Shanks described the way the Trump administration’s policy had “put [Fenway] in an untenable position, one we could not ignore.” She continued, “We cannot absorb the loss of this funding and continue to operate at the scale this community needs. Sometimes to protect care we must let go of the idea that care must come from us alone. That is not surrender, that is strategy.” This sentiment was met with cheers from the crowd, but outside the cadence of the demonstrators could be heard, their words indistinguishable but their anger impossible to mistake.
Not everyone inside the Gala at SoWa agreed that it’s strategy, not surrender for an LGBTQ+ community health center in the heart of blue America to end gender-affirming care for youth and young adults. Also in attendance was activist Alejandra Caraballo, who rose to shout “Shame! Shame!” as the speeches commenced, before being forcibly escorted out of the event by security guards. At another point, during Shanks’ speech, loudly chanting demonstrators seemed to be attempting to gain entry to the festivities, but were turned back by police.
The group behind these disruptions, Protect Trans Futures, was started recently by Walker and a friend. The two describe feeling an urgent need to act in the wake of Fenway’s October 13 announcement to end affirming care for patients under 19. Their goal is to create sustained pressure on the health center and build on the energy of the first Fenway Health protest October 17, organized by ACT UP Boston, which drew 200 picketers.
Walker and their co-organizer, who preferred not to give his name, are both transmascs in their early 20s. They’re also both Fenway patients who rely on the health center for hormone therapy. Not only is Fenway’s decision to end care for youth wrong, they say, its inclusion of legal adults in its withdrawal of care has left them in fear for their own care.
Concern that bans on youth care are only the beginning are widespread among trans people in the United States. Politicians in Missouri have introduced bills to ban medical transition under 25. One noted anti-trans politician, state Rep. Gary Click of Ohio, reportedly told supporters he sees the endgame as a blanket ban on care, regardless of age. While the stakes for trans youth who are unable to access care can be life or death, many trans people further feel a line must be drawn to protect necessary healthcare from hate-fueled ideological attacks.
Staging protesters both inside and outside a gathering is a tactic drawn directly from AIDS activism during the height of that epidemic, and in fact Protect Trans Futures is working in close collaboration with ACT UP Boston, a storied direct action group forged during that earlier crisis. ACT UP Boston’s chapter leader Gerry Scoppettuolo, whose affiliation with ACT UP goes back to the 1980s, is one of the young activists’ strongest supporters. He told Assigned Media he sees many similarities between then and now.
“Though we don’t see people all around us dying, it’s still a life or death matter for trans people,” Scoppettuolo told Assigned Media. “Trans people have huge targets on their backs. They’re the focus of huge hatred, with everything wrong in society being blamed on them.”
To Scoppettuolo, the connection between anti-trans hate and HIV/AIDS activism goes deeper than a symbolic torch-passing from gay rights veterans to young trans organizers. He points to the ongoing funding battles in congress, where HIV and AIDS treatment has been politicized and zeroed out in some Republican proposed budgets.
He also points to the CDC’s informational pages on HIV that were taken down in January by the administration and only restored under a court order. These pages now include text that states, “Per a court order, HHS is required to restore this website as of 11:59PM ET, February 11, 2025. Any information on this page promoting gender ideology is extremely inaccurate and disconnected from the immutable biological reality that there are two sexes, male and female.”
“How dare they?” asked Scoppettuolo, voice shaking with fury, “Only a court order is allowing the CDC pages to exist and be a source of support and health information for people.”
For activists, old and young, the fight to keep trans youth care at Fenway needs to be fought both for its own sake and to lay down a marker that the health of LGBTQ+ people cannot be sacrificed in the name of some vague greater good that no longer includes them. For Fenway Health, the fear of losing funding has driven them to make moves that many feel are a betrayal of the very community who they exist to serve. It’s one small fight among many for a trans community whose very survival is openly under threat during this second Trump term.
UPDATE 11/15/2025: According to Walker, who reached out to Assigned Media after the fact, Protect Trans Futures’ intent in approaching the entrance of the gala was not to enter, but to have their chanting heard by those inside. Our story has been slightly adjusted to reflect this.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article misspelled the last name of Fenway Health CEO Jordina Shanks.
Evan Urquhart is the founder of Assigned Media.
It is woefully inaccurate to state that Fenway Health Center has ceased to provide gender affirming care to its pediatric patients…. In a very specific and limited area of care, the Health Center has chosen to facilitate the transfer of certain services to other health care providers….All other pediatric care remains a priority and a commitment for the center… Harold du Four- Anderson
That’s complete bs, the youth are not being given proper help because Fenway Health is run about as tightly as a pair of sweat pants. You’re "transferring" children from the world of the living to the world of the dead. You ought to be ashamed of yourself to work in medicine while inflicting such harm on the innocent. If you think you can save yourself by abandoning your patients and the communities you serve to kowtow to transphobia, you are mistaken.
Harold, thank you so much for commenting. In US journalism, gender-affirming care has largely been used synonymously with transition care. This is, as I think you’re getting at, somewhat of a problem because mainstream audiences don’t necessarily appreciate that affirming care is really a framework that centers the needs of a trans, gender-nonconforming, or questioning patient. These needs approached with a nonjudgemental stance that does not prefer any particular treatment or outcome and encompasses much more than medical transition.
In journalism there’s a benefit to using language in the same way most other publications use it because it reduces confusion among readers. I generally err on the side of doing so because, although Assigned is a trans news site and most of its readers have a fairly advanced understanding of these things, I don’t want cisgender readers who happen across our stories to be confused by too many idiosyncratic usages.
On Oct 21st, Fenway Health stated, "Fenway Health will not provide medical gender-affirming care (hormones and puberty blockers) for patients under the age of 19." https://fenwayhealth.org/sharing-an-update-about-our-care-for-trans-health-patients-under-19-years-of-age I hope that as a member of the Board of Directors, Harold de Four-Anderson is aware of this fact. While medical transition care is not the only part of gender affirming care, it is NOT "a very specific and limited area of care" but a lifesaving resource that all trans people have a right to access if they want it. Furthermore, Fenway’s willingness to sacrifice this essential care for young people indicates that they are willing to fold under even the smallest governmental pressure. Pediatric care is NOT a priority for them. Trans care is NOT a priority for them. They have made this very clear through their actions, and no amount of flowery language can change that. In addition, their attempt to "facilitate the transfer of certain services" has been extremely lacking and irresponsible. An end to care was abruptly introduced over an electronic announcement to patients, and currently leaves many people without future care. Mr. Four-Anderson and Fenway Heath are going to have to step up in a big way if they want to earn back the trust of our community.
They did cease hormone prescription and blockers for those under 19 but it might be misleading to say they “no longer offer gender affirming care” since they do, albeit not the more major component of what that comprehensive support looks like. Not a defense of their actions just a clarification
This article is misleading. Is it poor journalism or deliberate attempt to incite misinformation and fuel anger? At a time when the LGBTQ community needs to come together to stand up to the current pressure, this journalist chooses to cherry-pick or deliberately mislead readers around what is and is not happening. To say they are ending trans care for under 19 is a LIE. They outsourced prescription distribution. They still help parents and trans connect with those sources and provide counseling and support in other ways. Why would Evan Urquhart deliberately mislead? Obviously, Evan is not to be trusted and is an enemy of the LGTBQ community.
I’m sorry you feel that way, but as a reporter it’s simply not my job to help Fenway Health spin the decision to stop prescribing puberty blockers or cross sex hormones to some of their trans patients as a minor matter.
A second Fenway health employee has struck the comments section. If we want to talk about misleading, why have neither of the Fenway health employees that have said something negative identified themselves as managers or members of the board of directors?
"Outsourcing prescription distribution" is a great euphemism for "is no longer prescribing these meds but also will give you a referral list."