Politics
LGBTQ leaders, DNC chair address LGBTQ Caucus meeting at Democratic convention
Danica Roem, Sarah McBride among attendees
CHICAGO — A coalition of LGBTQ leaders addressed the second meeting of the LGBTQ Caucus at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago’s McCormick Place Convention Center on Wednesday.
In order of appearance, speakers included Democratic National Committee LGBTQ Caucus Chair Earl Fowlkes, Harris-Walz National LGBTQ+ Engagement Director Sam Alleman, congressional candidate and Delaware state Sen. Sarah McBride (D), senior advisor to Vice President Kamala Harris Sergio Gonzales, LGBTQ Victory Fund and Institute President Annise Parker, Chasten Buttigieg, Texas state Rep. Julie Johnson (D), Democratic National Committee Chair Jaime Harrison, actor and LGBTQ activist Wilson Cruz, writer and LGBTQ activist Charlotte Clymer, Virginia state Sen. Danica Roem (D), National LGBTQ Task Force President Kierra Johnson, Stonewall veteran and transgender rights activist Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, and U.S. Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.).
Fowlkes celebrated the record-breaking number of LGBTQ delegates in Chicago this year — more than 800, up from 635 in 2020 — and invited those who were in the room to gather near the stage for photos. He also noted his formation of a trans advisory commission, an ad-hoc committee to the LGBTQ caucus.
“I don’t think I have to tell anyone how clear as day the difference between our ticket is and their ticket is when it comes to issues for our community,” Alleman said. Outlining the Out for Harris national LGBTQ organizing program, he noted the events and investments in earned and paid media, along with metrics.
Up next, Alleman said, will be continued onboarding of sub-groups and state programs with a focus on Broadway, drag performers, queer women, Black LGBTQ people, and “mama bears and allies.” He said Out for Harris will also scale national direct voter contact and organizing efforts through an organizing call on Aug. 29, weekly direct voter contact trainings and activations, which will become daily on Oct. 12, and get out the vote (GOTV) efforts.
McBride, the Democratic Party’s endorsed candidate for Delaware’s open congressional seat, said that while to she hopes to “join you in four years not just as Delaware’s next member of Congress, but as the first openly trans member of Congress in American history,” she is “running to make historic change on all of the issues that matter.”
“Right now, there is a cruel and concerted effort,” McBride said, to “roll back the clock on our progress” and “target some of the most vulnerable but badass members of the LGBTQ community for hate and discrimination — trans young people.”
“We also know what is possible when it comes to all of the issues that we face, because at the end of the day, as Audre Lorde reminds us, there is no such thing as a single issue cause, because no one lives single issue lives,” she said.
“As someone who has worked up close with the vice president now for a number of years,” said Gonzales, who has been a senior advisor to Harris from the time she began serving in the U.S. Senate in 2017, “the only thing I really want to focus on today for his remarks is just to make sure that you know we are on the cusp of electing a leader and a champion who has been in the LGBTQ community for years.”
But while “we know that Kamala Harris has showed up for our community time and again,” Gonzales said, now “Kamala Harris needs you” because “this is going to be a really tight election” and “we know the ugliness of the other side, the kind of hate that they’re spewing towards our community in particular.”
After outlining the services provided by the Victory Fund, which works to elect LGBTQ people to public office, and the Victory Institute, which provides training, professional development, and networking services, Parker discussed the stakes of November’s elections.
“Kamala Harris is going to have coattails,” she said, “but she’s going to need us at the grassroots pushing up. And people are going to show up for the trans school board candidate in their community. People are going to show up for a state rep who is non binary in their community. People going to show up for a lesbian or gay man who is running for city council. Even if they’re not excited about the top of the ticket, as we are, they will show up in their community for people they know.”
“Politics has always pushed me to try to do the right thing, and I don’t think me becoming a parent has changed my political convictions, but it sure has scared the daylight out of me,” said Buttigieg, who is raising a son and daughter with husband Pete Buttigieg, secretary of the U.S. Department of Transportation.
“I hope that we can remind one another that, yes, some dreams have come true because of politics and because of progress, because of the people linking arms in this room saying ‘we demand more, we demand better,'” he said, but there are kids out there who are afraid to be who they are or unable to be open about who they are for fear for their safety. “So let’s go out there and show them that there can be a better way, and I know we can do that by electing Kamala Harris and Tim Walz this November.”
Noting that she formed the first-ever LGBTQ caucus in the Texas legislature, Johnson said the message from her opponents during her primary campaign was “that the gay community, that the trans community, were terrible, were going to destroy our society and ruin the American family.”
“I was the only Democrat on TV, and my message was, I am gay all day, I am gay, gay, gay, gay, gay,” she said. “My message to you is this, don’t hide from your truth. Own it. Campaign on it. People value it. They will vote for you, and you will win, just like I did in the state of Texas.”
“I describe this convention as a big and probably the hardest family reunion in the world,” Harrison said, “because, in family reunions, people are laughing, they’re hugging, they’re dancing, and they’re crying sometimes, but those reunions are filled with love and happiness, joy” while “the other party is a party that’s built around fear; they want to make you afraid of everything.”
“When they come for one of us, they come for all of us,” he said. “I want every LGBTQ+ person who is growing up in this country to understand you matter, you are enough, and we are going to fight for you.”
Cruz defined the two tickets in stark and diametrically opposite terms. “We can have a White House that believes in equality for all of us,” he said, “or we can have a dictatorship hellbent on ending American democracy itself.”
“And that’s why I’m showing up,” said the actor, who is board chair of SMYAL, the LGBTQ youth-serving organization in D.C. “A brighter future is worth fighting for. For our young people, our freedoms are worth fighting for. We have made incredible progress, and we are not going back.”
Clymer thanked the DNC for “a fantastic convention this week,” adding that, “very respectfully, I also want to say something that I think needs to be heard.” At a time when “trans people are being viciously, directly attacked on a daily basis, and in a year when we are about to elect the first trans member of Congress, it is absolutely ridiculous that Sarah McBride is not on the speaking program” in the evening primetime sessions at the United Center.
When Terry McAuliffe lost the Virginia gubernatorial race to Republican Glenn Youngkin in 2021 “there was a lot of talk about CRT (critical race theory) and LGBTQ rights and all the hateful speech that is usually brought up in the analysis of why Democrats lose,” Clymer said. “What was missing in that post-election analysis is that a progressive trans woman was elected to the state Senate and outperformed the top of the ticket in her district.”
She was referring to Roem, the next speaker to take the stage. “Throughout this week, I’ve gotten the chance to hear people describe Vice President Harris as being fearless,” the Virginia state senator said, “and we heard even earlier about how she was that kid standing up to the playground bully as a child,” referring to an anecdote that was repeated by Harrison.
Roem explained how she learned to be fearless, too, as she gradually came out as trans, beginning around the time when Harris, then the newly elected district attorney of San Francisco, “started officiating [same-sex] weddings, and she did it with the same joy that’s the cornerstone of her campaign today.”
She “supported us before it was popular, even in the Democratic Party, not because it was easy, but because it was right,” Roem said.
“I met President Carter at the convention in Denver in 2008,” Johnson said. “You may not know that his administration was the first administration to entertain a queer delegation, and the Task Force led that delegation — yes, my president, President Carter, was the only president that the National LGBTQ Task Force Action Fund ever endorsed until just this year, when we endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris.”
She added, “It is only fitting, given that together, she and Tim [Walz] have a nearly unmatched record for being champions of LGBTQ+ people, and with you, with us, with our peoples, we can secure the presidency, the Senate and the House, and ensure the Equality Act is finally, finally passed — an Equality Act that was first introduced by President Carter, and we’re gonna finish that business with this next administration.”
After she was introduced by Johnson, members of the audience approached the stage to hear Miss Major draw the contrast between Harris, the first presidential candidate she has ever endorsed, and Trump, who she feels is beneath contempt.
The activist spoke with the Washington Blade last week for a profile focused on her decades of work as an activist, her involvement in this election, her work with the Task Force, and her take on the Harris campaign’s commitment to not go back.
Vermont’s first woman and first LGBTQ member of Congress took the stage to share how she “learned recently that there is this incredible thing that happens when we experience a sense of awe.”
“And when you experience that, something changes inside of you,” Balint said. “We know this intuitively, but the data also bears it out — you are more open to the world; you have more humility; you have more curiosity, which is why we seek it.”
“I want you to remember you have a part in this. You do not need to be in elected office to transform your community, to transform the people around you. Lean hard into your humility and your curiosity and your generosity. Others will be drawn to you.”
Congress
McBride, other US lawmakers travel to Denmark
Trump’s demand for Greenland’s annexation overshadowed trip
Delaware Congresswoman Sarah McBride is among the 11 members of Congress who traveled to Denmark over the past weekend amid President Donald Trump’s continued calls for the U.S. to take control of Greenland.
McBride, the first openly transgender person elected to Congress, traveled to Copenhagen, the Danish capital, with U.S. Sens. Chris Coons (D-Del.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and U.S. Reps. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.), Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.), Don Bacon (R-Neb.), and Sarah Jacobs (D-Calif.). The lawmakers met with Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Greenlandic MP Pipaluk Lynge, among others.
“I’m grateful to Sen. Coons for his leadership in bringing together a bipartisan, bicameral delegation to reaffirm our support in Congress for our NATO ally, Denmark,” said McBride in a press release that detailed the trip. “Delaware understands that our security and prosperity depend on strong partnerships rooted in mutual respect, sovereignty, and self-determination. At a time of growing global instability, this trip could not be more poignant.”
Greenland is a self-governing territory of Denmark with a population of less than 60,000 people. Trump maintains the U.S. needs to control the mineral-rich island in the Arctic Ocean between Europe and North America because of national security.
The Associated Press notes thousands of people on Saturday in Nuuk, the Greenlandic capital, protested against Trump. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is among those who have criticized Trump over his suggestion the U.S. would impose tariffs against countries that do not support U.S. annexation of Greenland.
A poll that Sermitsiaq, a Greenlandic newspaper, and Berlingske, a Danish newspaper, commissioned last January indicates 85 percent do not want Greenland to become part of the U.S. The pro-independence Demokraatit party won parliamentary elections that took place on March 12, 2025.
“At this critical juncture for our countries, our message was clear as members of Congress: we value the U.S.-Denmark partnership, the NATO alliance, and the right of Greenlanders to self-determination,” said McBride on Sunday in a Facebook post that contained pictures of her and her fellow lawmakers meeting with their Danish and Greenlandic counterparts.
Congress
Van Hollen speaks at ‘ICE Out for Good’ protest in D.C.
ICE agent killed Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis on Jan. 7
U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) is among those who spoke at an “ICE Out for Good” protest that took place outside U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s headquarters in D.C. on Tuesday.
The protest took place six days after a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old woman in Minneapolis.
Good left behind her wife and three children.
(Video by Michael K. Lavers)
Congress
Advocates say MTG bill threatens trans youth, families, and doctors
The “Protect Children’s Innocence” Act passed in the House
Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has a long history of targeting the transgender community as part of her political agenda. Now, after announcing her resignation from the U.S. House of Representatives, attempting to take away trans rights may be the last thing she does in her official capacity.
The proposed legislation, dubbed “Protect Children’s Innocence Act” is among the most extreme anti-trans measures to move through Congress. It would put doctors in jail for up to 10 years if they provide gender-affirming care to minors — including prescribing hormone replacement therapy to adolescents or puberty blockers to younger children. The bill also aims to halt gender-affirming surgeries for minors, though those procedures are rare.
Greene herself described the bill on X, saying if passed, “it would make it a Class C felony to trans a child under 18.”
According to KFF, a nonpartisan source for health policy research, polling, and journalism, 27 states have enacted policies limiting youth access to gender-affirming care. Roughly half of all trans youth ages 13–17 live in a state with such restrictions, and 24 states impose professional or legal penalties on health care practitioners who provide that care.
Greene has repeatedly introduced the bill since 2021, the year she entered Congress, but it failed to advance. Now, in exchange for her support for the National Defense Authorization Act, the legislation reached the House floor for the first time.
According to the 19th, U.S. Rep. Sarah McBride (D-Del.), the first trans member of Congress, rebuked Republicans on the Capitol steps Wednesday for advancing anti-trans legislation while allowing Affordable Care Act tax credits to expire — a move expected to raise health care costs for millions of Americans.
“They would rather have us focus in and debate a misunderstood and vulnerable one percent of the population, instead of focusing in on the fact that they are raiding everyone’s health care,” McBride said. “They are obsessed with trans people … they are consumed with this.”
Polling suggests the public largely opposes criminalizing gender-affirming care.
A recent survey by the Human Rights Campaign and Global Strategy Group found that 73 percent of voters in U.S. House battleground districts oppose laws that would jail doctors or parents for providing transition-related care. Additionally, 77 percent oppose forcing trans people off medically recommended medication. Nearly seven in 10 Americans said politicians are not informed enough to make decisions about medical care for trans youth.
The bill passed the House and now heads to the U.S. Senate for further consideration.
According to reporting by Erin Reed of Erin In The Morning, three Democrats — U.S. Reps. Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez of Texas and Don Davis of North Carolina — crossed party lines to vote in favor of the felony ban, joining 213 Republicans. A total of 207 Democrats voted against the bill, while three lawmakers from both parties abstained.
Advocates and lawmakers warned the bill is dangerous and unprecedented during a multi-organizational press call Tuesday. Leaders from the Human Rights Campaign and the Trevor Project joined U.S. Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.), Dr. Kenneth Haller, and parents of trans youth to discuss the potential impact of restrictive policies like Greene’s — particularly in contrast to President Donald Trump’s leniency toward certain criminals, with more than 1,500 pardons issued this year.
“Our MAGA GOP government has pardoned drug traffickers. They’ve pardoned people who tried to overthrow the government on January 6, but now they want to put pediatricians and parents into a jail cell for caring for their kids,” said Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson. “No one asked for Marjorie Taylor Greene or Dan Crenshaw or any politician to be in their doctor’s office, and they should mind their own business.”
Balint, co-chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, questioned why medical decisions are being made by lawmakers with no clinical expertise.
“Parents and doctors already have to worry about state laws banning care for their kids, and this bill would introduce the risk of federal criminal prosecution,” Balint said. “We’re talking about jail time. We’re talking about locking people up for basic medical care, care that is evidence-based, age-appropriate and life-saving.”
“These are decisions that should be made by doctors and parents and those kids that need this gender-affirming care, not certainly by Marjorie Taylor Greene.”
Haller, an emeritus professor of pediatrics at St. Louis University School of Medicine, described the legislation as rooted in ideology rather than medicine.
“It is not science, it is just blind ideology,” Haller said.
“The doctor tells you that as parents, as well as the doctor themselves, could be convicted of a felony and be sentenced up to 10 years in prison just for pursuing a course of action that will give your child their only chance for a happy and healthy future,” he added. “It is not in the state’s best interests, and certainly not in the interests of us, the citizens of this country, to interfere with medical decisions that people make about their own bodies and their own lives.”
Haller’s sentiment is echoed by doctors across the country.
The American Medical Association, the nation’s largest organization that represents doctors across the country in various parts of medicine has a longstanding support for gender-affirming care.
“The AMA supports public and private health insurance coverage for treatment of gender dysphoria and opposes the denial of health insurance based on sexual orientation or gender identity,” their website reads.
Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, senior vice president of public engagement campaigns at the Trevor Project, agreed.
“In Marjorie Taylor Greene’s bill [it] even goes so far as to criminalize and throw a parent in jail for this,” Heng-Lehtinen said. “Medical decisions should be between patients, families, and their doctors.”
Rachel Gonzalez, a parent of a transgender teen and LGBTQ advocate, said the bill would harm families trying to act in their children’s best interests.
“No politician should be in any doctor’s office or in our living room making private health care decisions — especially not Marjorie Taylor Greene,” Gonzalez said. “My daughter and no trans youth should ever be used as a political pawn.”
Other LGBTQ rights activists also condemned the legislation.
Tyler Hack, executive director of the Christopher Street Project, called the bill “an abominable attack on the transgender community.”
“Marjorie Taylor Greene’s last-ditch effort to bring her 3-times failed bill to a vote is an abominable attack on the transgender community and further cements a Congressional career defined by hate and bigotry,” they said. “We are counting down the days until she’s off Capitol Hill — but as the bill goes to the floor this week, our leaders must stand up one last time to her BS and protect the safety of queer kids and medical providers. Full stop.”
Hack added that “healthcare is a right, not a privilege” in the U.S., and this attack on trans healthcare is an attack on queer rights altogether.
“Marjorie Taylor Greene has no place in deciding what care is necessary,” Hack added. “This is another attempt to legislate trans and queer people out of existence while peddling an agenda rooted in pseudoscience and extremism.”
U.S. Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.), chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, also denounced the legislation.
“This bill is the most extreme anti-transgender legislation to ever pass through the House of Representatives and a direct attack on the rights of parents to work with their children and their doctors to provide them with the medical care they need,” Takano said. “This bill is beyond cruel and its passage will forever be a stain on the institution of the United States Congress.”
The bill is unlikely to advance in the Senate, where it would need 60 votes to pass.
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