“I wanted it to be awkward.”
The elevator got quiet immediately.
A neighbor in a crowded elevator had casually asked Scott Piro whether he and his husband were going to Pride that weekend. Scott tells me he could have smiled politely and moved on. Instead, he answered honestly.
“I said, actually no, because in addition to being gay, I’m Jewish, and I don’t feel safe in that community anymore as a Jew.”
Then he let the silence hang.
“That was my intention,” he says. “I wanted it to be awkward.”
For Piro, those uncomfortable moments have become a form of activism.
Sitting on a bench in Chelsea outside of his apartment, Scott Piro tells me he remains a registered Democrat to vote in the primaries. Even so, he notes, “Gay marriage was first legal in in Hawaii and then Massachusetts, and Republicans were absolutely the worst thing ever, the worst thing ever. And And now, I think they're the party for liberty and freedom.”
Again and again since October 7, he has deliberately chosen not to soften difficult truths for the comfort of the people around him. Whether in elevators, recovery meetings, or social media comment sections, he sees discomfort as an opportunity to force people to confront contradictions they would otherwise ignore.
“You can turn every conversation into a teachable moment,” he says.
That instinct now defines much of his life.
Raised outside Philadelphia by a Jewish mother and an Italian Catholic father, Piro grew up in a politically liberal world where his gay identity and Jewish identity once felt naturally aligned with progressive politics. After moving to New York in 1992, he immersed himself fully in queer life — joining the New York City Gay Men’s Chorus, marching in Pride events, and building friendships inside progressive activist spaces.
“So when I was coming out and embracing that part of myself,” he says, “I was all in.”
Politically, too, he felt firmly Democratic. He canvassed for Hillary Clinton, voted for Barack Obama while living in Tel Aviv, and spent years believing Republicans were hostile to people like him.
Are you a lifelong Democrat or Republican who suddenly feels like you don’t recognize your own party? Let’s talk.
“Republicans were absolutely the worst thing ever,” he says.
But long before October 7, Piro had already begun speaking out online about antisemitism and anti-Israel rhetoric during the 2021 Gaza conflict. Working professionally in communications, he understood how narratives spread — and how few people inside his social circles were seeing anything outside progressive framing.
At first, he mostly reshared content from others. Eventually, though, he began directly engaging with hostile comments himself.
“I have a methodology,” he says. “Respond to them for the lurkers.”
The goal, he explains, is not necessarily to change the mind of the person attacking him, but to educate everyone silently watching.
“See, that’s a libel. See, that’s a deflection tactic.”
Then came October 7.
Inside recovery spaces where he had spent years building community during sobriety, Piro suddenly found himself confronting casual antisemitism openly. In one meeting, after objecting to someone casually using the word “Nazi,” he says he was publicly shut down. Multiple Jewish attendees later privately thanked him — but none spoke publicly in the moment.
At another recovery meeting for the LGBTQ community, Scott noticed that shares were getting overly political with a disturbing “group think” tendency. Attendees discussed civil rights and oppression while omitting Jews, and enthusiastically praised volunteering for Zohran Mamdani’s campaign.
“I defend anyone’s right to discuss what they need to in order to let go of their addictive substance or behavior, but I don’t have to hear it,” Scott says. “And so I voted with my feet and stopped going there.”
Increasingly, he began feeling that progressive spaces which once championed minority protection no longer extended that same empathy to Jews.
“I don’t identify as white,” he says. “I don’t feel privileged carrying pepper spray everywhere I go right now.”
Scott Piro’s pepper spray, which he carries in his pocket while wearing a Jewish star, due to safety concerns.
In his essay “The Cost of Staying” for White Rose Magazine, Piro describes the emotional exhaustion of remaining loyal to institutions that no longer seemed willing to stand up for Jews.
Today, he still remains a registered Democrat, but emotionally he feels politically homeless.
“The Democratic Party is gone,” he says. “The one we all knew, that we all grew up with, that overwhelming percentages of Jewish Americans voted for…for generations.”
Piro now describes himself as “a single issue voter,” focused primarily on Jewish safety. And while that transformation still surprises him, he refuses to retreat quietly from conversations that make people uncomfortable.
“My husband likes to say, ‘Scott, you are only caring about Jewish issues. Why don't you care so much about what ICE is doing to immigrants or what the Trump administration is doing to trans people?’ I do care about trans people and I do care about immigrants who enter this country legally. And I care about other minorities. I do care deeply, but I can't care about them if I'm dead, you know, if someone has bashed my head in as I wait to cross the street because I'm wearing a Jewish star.”