President Joe Biden signed a letter acknowledging Equality Forum’s LGBTQ History Month launch event held on Sunday, writing that, “by celebrating stories of bravery, resilience and joy, your example inspires hope in all people seeking a life true to who they are.”

Malcolm Lazin, Equality Forum executive director, said Biden’s letter is “consequential.” He noted that one year before the White House delivered a proclamation for Black History Month, it issued a letter signed by the president.

“It’s our hope that next year, our nation’s 47th president will issue that proclamation for LGBT History Month,” Lazin said.

Equality Forum is an LGBTQ civil rights organization with an educational focus based in Philadelphia. The group’s work includes coordinating LGBTQ History Month, producing documentary films and overseeing the application for and installation of government-approved queer historic markers.

When spearheading LGBTQ History Month for the first time back in 2006, Lazin said many pushed back against the idea. Some media outlets claimed it was trying to turn straight people gay or promote pedophilia. 

But Lazin said the homophobic reactions died down when people were educated on topics that typically weren’t taught in a widespread way.

“We were demonized, marginalized, and vilified,” Lazin said. “One of the certain principal ways you’re going to make headway is if you humanize who we are, and also educate people about the important contributions we make to our common society.”

Education has always been Equality Forum’s solution to societal backlash or controversy since its inception, Lazin said.

The organization got its start in 1993 under the name PrideFest Philadelphia. Lazin, who was the founder, said it was created during a time when Pride parades were the main focus of the LGBTQ community. 

In an effort to shift focus onto civil rights issues, PrideFest hosted its first LGBTQ summit that eventually transformed into an event featuring national and international organizations. Lazin said it was an effort to educate people on LGBTQ history as well as inform the community on queer rights around the world.

Though that event was terminated in 2020, Lazin is still focused on educating both queer and straight people on LGBTQ civil rights. Equality Forum honors 31 “LGBTQ icons” each year for every day in October.

This initiative began when Equality Forum started coordinating LGBTQ History Month back in 2006, but Lazin didn’t notice their efforts taking off until about five years in.

“In year one, people thought, ‘Oh yeah, those are like all the important names of the gay community,’” he said. “People paid a little bit more attention the following years, and all of a sudden they’re recognizing, ‘Oh, in a certain sense I was clueless about the role models that the gay community has.’”

This year’s icons being recognized include names like singers George Michael, Luther Vandross, and Sam Smith; pioneering drag queen William Dorsey Swann; “The Bachelor” star Colton Underwood; Wisconsin Congressman Mark Pocan; and longtime Washington Blade Editor Kevin Naff.

Pocan received the International Role Model Award during Sunday’s LGBTQ History Month launch event. It’s the longest-standing LGBTQ award in the nation, and has been presented to prominent figures like former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg.

He said accepting the award allowed him to reflect on the progress that’s been made in a relatively short time.

“I was preparing to make some remarks for the event, and I realized that I’ve been kind of in the front row of a lot of the history making in the country, because more of our history is in the last several decades,” Pocan told the Washington Blade. “There are significant moments in the past, but where the real improvements have happened have been more recent.”

In 1995, former President Bill Clinton invited Pocan, who is gay, and other LGBTQ elected officials to The White House for the first time. When they arrived and were going through security, Pocan said they noticed everyone was wearing blue gloves.

Initially assuming it was due to enhanced security following the aftermath of the Oklahoma City Bombing, Pocan said they later discovered the Secret Service agents thought they could contract AIDS from out elected officials.

He said the Secret Service issued an apology letter and the Clinton administration made it clear that wasn’t their policy. Even more memorable for Pocan was when then-Vice President Al Gore made it a point to shake everyone’s hands at the event.

Comparing that memory to Biden’s recent letter puts the advancements of LGBTQ rights into perspective for Pocan. He said that’s the reason recognizing and remembering queer history is vital.

“If you don’t know the history, it’s too easy to repeat it,” he said.

The fight to recognize the global work done toward advancing LGBTQ civil rights, however, isn’t over, Lazin said.

Many states are working to restrict LGBTQ topics from being taught in schools. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed HB 1069 last year, dubbed “Don’t Say Gay” by critics, to prohibit lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity.

The New College of Florida faced backlash when photos of hundreds of library books, many containing LGBTQ topics, overflowing a dumpster were shared online. A New College spokesperson said the books were “taken after discovering that the library did not follow all of the state administrative requirements while conducting the routine disposition of materials.”

Despite what the future may hold for LGBTQ content in schools, Lazin said the resources Equality Forum promotes, including the website featuring 31 queer icons in October, are always available.

“At least on this site, students, teachers, and guidance counselors have resources,” he said. “So if you’re an English teacher and you want to be celebrating LGBT History Month, click on poets, or click on authors. You’ve got a whole rich range of people to be able to bring into your curriculum.”

The reality of what LGBTQ History Month has become today is more than the work of one organization; Lazin said it’s the combined effort of local communities that are curious about their own history.

“While we could not possibly take on doing the history of all the cities around the country or in North America or around the world, it really has helped to encourage people to appreciate that history and to make sure that it is well documented,” Lazin said.

Vice President Kamala Harris has eked out a narrow lead in the latest polls, but slim margins in seven key battleground states are still likely to decide the outcome of the election, which experts say will be the closest America has had in decades, if not more than a century.

And LGBTQ voters, who comprise a larger share of the electorate than ever before, are expected to play a major role in November.

The Washington Blade discussed what lies ahead for the Harris team, particularly with respect to LGBTQ constituent engagement, in separate interviews last week with one of the campaign’s gay co-chairs, U.S. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), and its national LGBTQ+ engagement director, Sam Alleman.

Criss-crossing the country

With just over a month until Election Day, the Harris-Walz team is in overdrive enlisting key surrogates and staff to fan out across the U.S. With a focus, of course, on Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

“We’ve got to make sure we compete everywhere,” Garcia said. “So wherever I can be, I’ll be.”

The congressman headlined an event with the LGBTQ community in Phoenix on Monday night for Out for Harris, the campaign’s LGBTQ-focused national organizing effort. Queer voters are “always engaging and always asking questions,” he said, eager to discuss “their future and their rights and how dangerous Donald Trump would be for them.”

Garcia said the “best part” about his involvement with the Harris campaign has been traveling the country to connect with these folks. “I actually took 100 local activists from Long Beach, from my community, out to Nevada, with two busses a couple weeks ago, which was great,” he said, “just to go door knocking.”

Up next for the congressman is another trip to Nevada and then to Pennsylvania, he said.

“We’re aiming to have Out for Harris working groups and committees in all 50 states to do this work of mobilizing voters in this critical election to elect Kamala Harris and Tim Walz and defeat Donald Trump and J.D. Vance,” Alleman said.

“We’ve had in-person phone banks in New York, D.C., and California,” while “we have New Jersey and Washington State and Massachusetts hosting in-person events,” he said, explaining that by hitting even places that might “not be part of our pathway to victory,” the campaign is building out the infrastructure to help reach “voters in battleground states and be that surge capacity.”

Additionally, “I can’t say too much just yet, but we’re really, really excited for what we’re planning for Pride in Philadelphia, Phoenix Pride, Las Vegas Pride, Atlanta Pride” — all taking place, Alleman said, in mid-October, by which time voting will have already begun in most of those cities.

“Pride is fun,” and the campaign’s presence in places where the community gathers to celebrate is an exemplification of the “joy” that has become a defining feature of the campaign since Harris was tapped to lead the Democratic ticket on July 21, Alleman said.

Voters have concerns. The campaign wants them to see the contrast.

In his conversations with voters, Garcia said, Project 2025, the 900+ page governing blueprint for a second Trump term, is often top of mind, notwithstanding the former president’s efforts to “skirt or dodge” the extreme plans detailed in the document.

“It’s clear that this is the Donald Trump agenda. I think everyone knows that, and we’re going to continue to hammer home that it’s also very bad for LGBTQ+ people,” he said, noting that Project 2025 contains “all sort of horrible things,” including plans to roll back and revoke rights like LGBTQ-inclusive workplace protections while advancing policies like “book bans [that target] our community in schools.”

More broadly, Garcia said, “there’s no question that Donald Trump is bad for gay people. I mean, look at the Supreme Court…just on the courts alone, how could you argue any differently?”

One could look at everything from Trump’s “positions on trans issues,” to “his authoritarian nature” and his opposition to the Equality Act for evidence that his election would be harmful to the LGBTQ community, Garcia said. “I mean, I could go on and on.”

Alleman echoed those remarks and added that Harris and Walz, by contrast, have fought to expand rights and protections for LGBTQ people throughout their careers, standing up for the community well before doing so was popular or politically advantageous. “Standing with us when it wasn’t necessarily very easy to do,” he said, “speaks volumes to our community, but it also just speaks volumes to their values and to their leadership.”

“In every reality, under almost every other issue that you could talk about, right, Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are fighting for LGBTQ people’s totality of their lives, when it comes to their ability to access healthcare, when it comes to their ability to work with dignity and make a living wage and work in an economy that works for them, rather than big corporations,” he said. “Those are the issues that LGBTQ+ people also care about the most, in addition to their freedoms and the things that are identity or community driven.”

Likewise, Garcia said voters’ concerns about the judiciary extend beyond LGBTQ rights and into issues of reproductive freedom, because they understand that the former president appointed three right-wing justices to the Supreme Court, which led to the 2022 decision scrapping Roe v. Wade’s constitutional protections for abortion. “There’s a lot of conversation about abortion rights,” he said. “I think people understand that that’s where Donald Trump plans to take the country even further into restrictions — so, people are pushing back on that.”

“Vice President Harris has made Roe one of the central pieces of her campaign, because there’s still a lot of folks out there that are just tuning in, that might, you know, have gotten a lot of their information from places like Fox [News] or, you know, misinformation on Facebook or social media,” Garcia said.

“It’s important to get the facts out there,” he added, “to get people out there talking to their neighbors, going door to door — I mean, all of that matters.”

It may not be sexy…

First and foremost, Alleman said, Out for Harris is implementing a robust “national, distributed organizing program [that’s] really oriented around voter contact via phone calls,” which is on track — conservatively — “to do approximately 1.2 million calls before Election Day.”

Alleman added that “the work around these community calls” also involves “taking those calls and turning them to actual organizing that supports their battleground states.” And while “it’s not very sexy,” he stressed that these efforts are “low thrills, high value in terms of talking to voters” because “we are truly committed to getting as many people on the phone that we can across the country, especially in the battleground states, between now and Nov. 5.”

By Oct. 12, he said Out for Harris will have phone banking events every day, “and it’ll be like community-based; Monday is Broadway night, Tuesday is trans folks for Harris, Wednesday is LGBTQ+ women for Harris, Thursday and Saturday are catch-all for [the Human Rights Campaign],” and Friday is yet to-be-determined. (Volunteers can sign up to participate or learn more about the program at kamalaharris.com/out.)

Alleman shared that during a recent Out for Harris Broadway-themed call, “we had like, 3,000 people in attendance. And I want to say there were like 500 or 600 people trying to phone bank with us, and they have their first canvassing trip into Pennsylvania,” which illustrates how the program is working within the campaign to ensure “that these calls are translating into organizing.”

Acknowledging that the relationship between LGBTQ rights and organized religion is complicated, Alleman said that Out for Harris plans to administer trainings and lead an organizing call for faith leaders who have created safe spaces for LGBTQ people or otherwise been supportive of the community, such that the campaign can “make sure we’re leveraging their congregations to get them involved.”

Getting creative

Along with organizing in-person events, joining Pride celebrations, administering phone banks, and working with high-profile surrogates like Garcia to help boost the campaign’s message in the battlegrounds, Alleman highlighted upcoming moves like Out for Harris’s plans to partner with Democratic National Committee to provide toolkits to drag performers.

The goal, he said, is to provide materials and guidance “so they can do this work on their own, at their shows” such as by displaying QR codes for fans to get involved and providing instructions for how they can register to vote.

To contend with the challenge of navigating a “fragmented media market,” Alleman said, the Harris campaign is focused on “relationships and messaging in all the senses and ways.” This means, for instance, maintaining a strong social media game, dispatching folks to do “the relational organizing on the ground,” and “finding the nontraditional messengers” — like drag queens and faith leaders — while also “hitting everyone where we can” with earned media coverage and paid advertising.

Alleman also noted Harris’s appearance on “RuPaul’s Drag Race” for the “All-Stars” finale in June, another example of how the campaign has been creative and strategic with outreach to LGBTQ voters and allies.

Leveraging Harris’s advantage with LGBTQ voters

Alleman stressed that the Harris campaign does not take support from LGBTQ voters for granted. “We have to work to earn these voters’ votes, too. And I think the program we are building is so indicative of that, and it’s truly our goal beyond just LGBTQ+ rights — we’re communicating with voters, LGBTQ+ voters, and equality voters about the full range of our platform and what we’re doing, because we firmly believe it will benefit them. Extraordinarily.”

Often, Alleman said, “we divorce LGBTQ+ experiences and people as if they don’t have the same experiences and desires as everyone else” but the Harris campaign is “making sure that we’re saying where we stand on the LGBTQ+ issues but [also] making sure that we’re not losing sight of the totality of the voter we’re communicating to.”

“LGBTQ+ people are more likely to suffer from housing insecurity, more likely to suffer from food insecurity, more likely to be in poverty, more likely to be homeless as teenagers,” he said, “and all of the work that we’ve done in the inflation Reduction Act and in this administration, and all the things that Kamala Harris has said that she’s going to do [if elected] have direct impacts on the LGBTQ+ community and our ability to live full, authentic lives.”

This means “not just to be out as LGBTQ, which is critically important, but [also] having a government that fully cares for everything that goes into what being an LGBTQ plus person is,” Alleman said.

“The majority of us are voting already for Harris,” Garcia said. “That’s great. But what about our friends and family? Like, can we have those conversations with friends that might be on the fence, or maybe we have family that are independent or are not sure who to vote for — those are the conversations that we need to have [to] explain to our family how electing someone like Donald Trump could actually be very damaging, hurtful, and cause real harm to us.”

“LGBTQ people have a role to play, not only in voting, but in telling our stories and talking to people that have yet to make up their mind on how they’re going to vote,” he said. “People that we know.”

Alleman, likewise, acknowledged that “LGBTQ+ people overwhelmingly support Democratic candidates and overwhelmingly support Kamala Harris,” adding that part of the campaign’s work and his work as LGBTQ+ engagement director is to “capture that energy” and “bring them into our campaign and our movement.”

The Harris campaign has earned the support of every major LGBTQ advocacy group, and in turn has focused on “creating buy-in for” the “state and local partner organizations” along with “our national partners” such that they “feel like this is a place where they can invest their time that is meaningful, to make a difference in their work,” Alleman said.

“We are seeing the Human Rights Campaign make historic investments and cooperate with us, [working] hand in glove with our campaign,” he said.

Alleman noted the campaign’s endorsements from groups like the Center for Black Equity through its c4 Political Action Fund (a first for the organization, which started and runs Black Prides throughout the U.S.), LPAC, the political action committee supporting LGBTQ women and nonbinary candidates (which had not backed a presidential ticket prior to this year), and the National LGBTQ+ Task Force Action Fund, which had not otherwise endorsed a presidential candidate in the last 50 years.

Not only does the support of these groups signal that they understand “what’s at stake” in this election, but also their recognition of the “vehicles and access points where they can see themselves and their people in the work that we’re doing as a campaign and as a party,” Alleman said.

“Empowering the partner organizations that do this work within those subsets of LGBTQ+ communities,” he said, allows the campaign to target and engage with the voter who “comes from one of those different backgrounds or walks of life” in an intersectional manner that acknowledges how “there are LGBTQ voters across every other identity that we do this work in.”

The Trump campaign has taken a different approach to engaging with LGBTQ voters

In April, former first lady Melania Trump headlined a fundraiser for Log Cabin Republicans, the conservative LGBT group, at Mar-a-Lago. And more recently, on Sept. 29, the organization hosted a concert in Nashville by musician Kid Rock that also featured Donald Trump Jr., former Fox News host Kimberly Guilfoyle, and Ric Grenell, the gay diplomat who served as acting director of national intelligence, U.S. ambassador to Germany, and special presidential envoy for Serbia and Kosovo peace negotiations during the Trump administration.

Otherwise and apart from “flashy media things to contact us and reach us” without meaningful follow-through, “I haven’t seen any intentional effort” by the Trump campaign to engage with LGBTQ voters, Alleman said. “I haven’t seen anything on the ground. And I just think it’s so fascinating and interesting that [they claim to] want to do these things, and yet their actions just show how little they care about us as a voting bloc.”

In an emailed statement, Log Cabin Republicans President Charles Moran noted that “As has been widely reported, the RNC and Trump campaign are decentralizing their outreach efforts to involve organizations and groups doing the work to increase efficiency and energize the grassroots, and LGBT voter base is no different.”

“We are one of the fastest growing voting blocs in this country,” Alleman said. “As the data bears out, about eight percent of people identify as LGBTQ+” which equates to “somewhere between 20 and 25 percent of people [aged] 18 to 25” — a group of voters whose support, therefore, one might expect both campaigns to aggressively court.

On “the lack of any real intentional outreach,” by the opponent’s campaign, which may strengthen Harris’s edge with LGBTQ voters, Alleman said, “you know, I’m not mad about it.”

Moran detailed some of his organization’s work on LGBTQ voter outreach and mobilization on behalf of the Trump campaign during this election cycle: “Log Cabin Republicans, the nation’s oldest and largest organization LGBT Republicans, conservatives and our straight allies, is leading the charge on this effort for 2024,” he said, stressing that this comes independently from the “work being done by our nearly 80 chapters in 40 states around the country.”

Last week, he said, LCR announced that the group had “pulled in the leadership of the ‘gays for Kennedy’ folks to build out the outreach to Independents and disaffected Democrats.”

“For months, we’ve been building our messaging and ground team,” Moran said. “On the communications side, we have Outspoken, our long-running digital messaging campaign running at full intensity putting out original content, fact-checking Democratic and media lies, and engaging our voters in the digital realm.”

He continued, “On the ground, we have 9 state-based field directors in the targeted swing-states organizing and coordinating with our chapters and campaigns and party committees on the ground. This team has over 250 events already executed or on the books through Election Day. Finally, we have 9 Trump Unity rallies, our broader campaign coalition name, in swing states. These are full-production events with hundreds of people at each, with high-profile surrogates for each. The first one is actually a week from now in Philadelphia.”

“Democrats want to pretend like nothing is going on, but this couldn’t be further from the truth,” Moran added. “This year, we have the most inclusive GOP platform that welcomes LGBT voters to the table, because we all have an equal stake in the future and prosperity of the nation. Log Cabin Republicans is prepared to take the mantle and run the most comprehensive campaign we ever have.”

Garcia, who agreed with Alleman that the Trump campaign is “not interested” in reaching out to LGBTQ constituents, had an even more pointed take: “I think their base hates them,” he said. “I mean, you see the homophobia.”

From “the attacks on trans people,” to “the attacks on gay history” and “the attacks on gay rights in the workplace,” the congressman said, “there’s nothing to connect with” for LGBTQ constituents.

Homing in on conservative LGBTQ voters who might be inclined to support Trump, Garcia suggested there are not very many of them — apart from “some loud personalities out there” and “a lot of those quote, unquote, Log Cabin Republicans,” who “I think are, you know, more interested in holding power in some cases than helping our own community.”

The congressman added, “I don’t know why they’d be reaching out to gay conservatives when there’s nothing to offer them,” because “what are they going to talk about?” He suggested that maybe some right-leaning LGBTQ folks “are excited about tax cuts for billionaires.” 

Advocacy groups across the country are marking National Hispanic Heritage Month.

The Creative Artists Agency in Los Angeles on Sept. 20 hosted a comedy night that featured Danielle Perez, Gabe González, Lorena Russ, and Roz Hernandez. The event, which GLAAD organized, also included a screening of “Dímelo,” a digital series the organization produced with LatiNation that features interviews with Latino comedians. 

A press release notes Damian Terriquez, Mimi Davila, Salina EsTitties, and Tony Rodriguez attended the event. GLAAD in a post on its website on Sept. 25 highlighted Essa Noche and other Latino drag queens.

“The art of drag has always been a vibrant expression of resistance, creativity, and identity, particularly within marginalized communities,” reads the post. “Latine drag artists not only embody the resilience and power of their heritage but also elevate queer voices in spaces where their visibility is often limited.”

EsTitties on Sept. 29 hosted Queerceañera, “an inclusive take on the coming-of-age quinceañera tradition throughout Latin America and the United States” the Los Angeles LGBT Center organized.

Celebrate Orgullo, which describes itself as the “first Hispanic and Indigenous LGBTQ+ festival in Greater Miami and Miami Beach,” will take place from Oct. 4-14. Unity Coalition|Coalición Unida, is organizing the events.

“The festival invites you to experience a warm and welcoming ‘wave’ of pride that celebrates what makes us unique while uniting us in a shared spirit of inclusion,” reads a press release.

GLSEN has posted to its website a list of resources for undocumented students.

“Especially in this political climate, it’s important not only to affirm LGBTQ Latinx identities with positive representation but also to ensure that students know how they’re protected, especially those who are among the most marginalized,” says GLSEN.

National Hispanic Heritage Month is from Sept. 15-Oct. 15.

Fenway Health in Boston on its website notes National Hispanic Heritage Month “honors and celebrates the vibrant histories, cultures, languages, traditions, values, and contributions of people whose ancestors came from Spain, Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America.”

Hispanic Heritage Week began in 1968. It became National Hispanic Heritage Month in 1988.

Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua mark their respective Independence Days on Sept. 15. Mexico’s Independence Day is on Sept. 16, and Chile’s Independence Day is on Sept. 18. Día de la Raza is Oct. 12.

“Here at Fenway Health, we are grateful every day for the many Latino/a/é staff members, clients, patients, volunteers, and supporters that are part of our community,” said Fenway Health. Their contributions and perspectives help drive Fenway’s mission: To advocate for and deliver innovative, equitable, accessible health care, supportive services, and transformative research and education and to center LGBTQIA+ people, BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and other people of color) individuals, and other underserved communities to enable our local, national, and global neighbors to flourish.”

President Joe Biden in his National Hispanic Heritage Month proclamation made a similar point.

“In our country, Latino leaders are striving for the American Dream and helping those around them reach it too,” he said. “From those who have been here for generations to those who have recently arrived, Latinos have pushed our great American experiment forward.”  

The proclamation also acknowledges Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, Small Business Administration Administrator Isabel Guzman, and other Latino members of his administration.

“I am proud to work with incredible Latino leaders, who are dedicated to bettering our nation every day,” said Biden.