It was not unexpected. House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, 85, is retiring after serving 39 years in Congress. Her announcement video, released Thursday, is an ode to her beloved San Francisco, brimming with images of people, landmarks, and the proud liberal story that quickened her heart and stiffened her spine as she fought for progress in making America a more perfect union. 

“My message to the city I love is this: San Francisco, know your power,” Pelosi said. “We have always led the way, and now we must continue to do so by remaining full participants in our democracy and fighting for the American ideals we hold dear.” 

Pelosi’s legacy as the country’s powerful first and, so far, only female House speaker — serving twice in that role, 2007-2011 and 2019-2023 — is replete with examples of how she smartly and bravely stood up to bullies, including Republican President Donald Trump and his violence-prone cult followers who demonize her, and sought her out during the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol as she led the certification of Joe Biden as president. Roughly three years later, her husband Paul was seriously attacked in their San Francisco home by an intruder intent on kidnapping her. 

As House speaker, Pelosi presided over Trump’s two impeachment votes in his first term. And while she might not reach those heights again while she serves until January 2027, she was a visible force in passing California’s Proposition 50, working behind the scenes, helping Gov. Gavin Newsom raise money and construct the state’s reapportionment initiative in response to Trump’s attempts to rig the 2026 midterms. 

Prop 50 — the only thing on the ballot in this special election — won handily with almost 64 percent of the vote to 36 percent percent. Los Angeles County voted “Yes” 73 percent to 27 percent.  

“Some people go off and they talk about the way the world should be, but they don’t do anything to damn manifest it,” Newsom said on election night, per the New York Times. “Nancy Pelosi doesn’t go out to try to make points. She makes a difference.”

Two of her most memorable achievements as Speaker were her deft political strategy, vote counting and arm-twisting to pass extremely difficult legislation such as the new Obama administration’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act after President George W. Bush’s “too big to fail” Great Recession and the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) — after which she proclaimed that “being a woman is no longer a pre-existing condition.”

During her decades in Congress and before, Pelosi has been a towering hero. “She’s just always been there,” longtime AIDS and gay activist Cleve Jones, who at first didn’t take her seriously, told the New York Times. “She’s more than an ally. She’s family.”

In May 2018, I interviewed Nancy Pelosi, then the House Minority Leader, in advance of the important midterm elections — the success of which resulted in her historic election as Speaker for a second time. 

With Trump and Project 2025 erasing our rights and our history with their version of Christianity and with the new AIDS Monument opening on Nov. 16 in West Hollywood, I think Nancy Pelosi illustrates how one can be religious, progressive, and decent, such as her expression of gratitude to President George W. Bush for his PEPFAR AIDS program.

Nancy Pelosi: The famous Leader you may not know (Excerpts) 

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is the embodiment of the feminist adage “the personal is political.” She celebrated part of her 78th birthday at an LGBTQ equality weekend in Palm Springs, which she declared a “fabulous” fundraiser for the Democratic effort to “take away” the House from the Republicans in the November midterm elections.

Pelosi is so confident of victory, she told the Los Angeles Blade that out Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) will be the next chair of the House Veterans Affairs Committee come January 2019. 

“‘We will win. I will run for speaker. I feel confident about it. And my members do, too,” the Boston Globe reported May 1 on Pelosi’s meeting with the Globe’s editorial staff. “It’s important that it not be five white guys at the table, no offense,” referring to Trump’s meeting with the top two leaders from the House and Senate. “I have no intention of walking away from that table.”…

Many of the darts thrown at Pelosi over the years have been acid-tipped with LGBTQ-hatred. “One of the things the Republicans like to do around the country is to represent me as a LGBTQ-first-and-foremost supporter. I represent San Francisco, which they caricaturize as being a gay haven and capitol. And that’s something we’re very proud of,” Pelosi [said]. “But the fact is, the country is going to leave them behind because people have a different level of respect because of the work the LGBTQ community has done in many areas to end discrimination and in the fight against HIV/AIDS.”

Pelosi says HIV/AIDS and passage of the Equality Act are top priorities.

“The Equality Act is something that really should be appreciated in a very special way because it really is transformative,” Pelosi says. “It just changes everything. It says whether it’s credit or housing or job discrimination, or you name it — you can no longer discriminate. Well, you shouldn’t discriminate to begin with. But it makes it a part of the Civil Rights Act to protect [LGBTQ] people.”…

To be sure, enshrining discrimination into law seems to be a subtextual plan of the Trump-Pence administration, with more information leaking out about Pence’s behind-the-scenes machinations involving the ban on transgender service members serving openly in the military …

Pelosi’s focus is on winning the House. “We are going to be focusing on the economy in our debate,” she says … “What we have to do is focus on the economic insecurity of American families and people. It’s about their apprehensions and their aspirations. And that’s what we need to be talking about … ”

Pelosi also shares the concern of then-U.S. Rep. Adam Schiff, her appointee to the House Intelligence Committee, about the “dismantling of our democratic institutions that President Trump is so set upon, whether it is dismantling and discrediting the press, which I think is the greatest guardian of our freedom — freedom of press, dismantling of our Justice Department and law enforcement, in terms of the FBI, ignoring the system of checks and balances that exists in our Constitution, which is the strength of our country.”…

“The president is anti-governance. He doesn’t really believe in the role of government in improving people’s situations,” Pelosi says. “So it’s a comprehensive approach to dismantling democratic institutions … One of the reasons people should be very concerned is because the president is doing nothing to protect our electoral system, our democracy.”…

While young people at the #ResistMarch in West Hollywood last year were stirred up by Leader Pelosi’s rhetoric, it was clear they knew she was important — but not really who she was and why she was so passionate about LGBTQ equality.

Some of it is centered in Pelosi’s Catholicism, which is not the set of beliefs the Catholic Church espoused during Prop 8 and other political-religious battles. 

“As a Catholic, I was raised to respect every person. We’re all God’s children. In my family, there was never any question about that,” she says. “In Baltimore, we did have a growing LGBT community — we didn’t call it that then, but it was part of our lives, and it was not any question that we would be any more respectful of one person than another. It wasn’t even an issue with me, and I didn’t ever even describe it or associate it with Catholicism because Catholicism taught me something different. It didn’t teach me discrimination. It taught me respect. And so it prepared me very well, my Catholicism, for being a representative in San Francisco.”

During the 1980s, with the unchecked rise of AIDS, the Vatican came under intense criticism for sticking to its absolute prohibition against using condoms, coupled with Pope John Paul II calling homosexuality “intrinsically evil.”

Pelosi seems momentarily speechless. “I think the church’s position that people could not use condoms — it’s so hypocritical, I can’t even go to that place,” she says. “The church may make a proclamation, but they make a proclamation that people should not be using any contraception or birth control at all — it’s all about having a child. So while people are faithful to their religion, they are certain practicing what they need for the size and timing of their family, according to meeting their responsibility to the free will that God has given all of us.”

Ironically, because San Francisco “took a very big bite of that wormy apple called AIDS,” the church “was more sympathetic to people when they had HIV/AIDS because they needed help then they were to people who weren’t infected. It was the strangest, strangest thing,” Pelosi says.

“It’s a funny thing. The Catholics — and I’m surrounded by Catholics — but the Catholics that I grew up with and I lived with in California were always respectful of the church, of the pope, of our faith, and never thought it was in any way a barrier to us doing what we believed. And sometimes that was diametrically opposed to what their public statements were.”

Not that she thinks the church is immune to criticism. “There’s no question the Catholic Church in California was a participant in Prop 8 in a negative way,” Pelosi says. “We were on the other side of that. But to me, it was their problem. It wasn’t anything that was any moral imperative to me for me to follow the church in enshrining discrimination in the law in California.”

Pelosi also does not concur with churches that pontificate about the “non-negotiable” — being gay, marriage equality, euthanasia, birth control, all generally lumped together. The commonality is the certainty that “all interactions between people are about producing a child. Then you cannot have birth control, family planning, or any of that, and you cannot have homosexual relations,” she says. 

“I view that as kind of their problem. It’s not the reality of life, and it’s not about respecting the dignity and worth of every person.”

But, Pelosi adds, “I’m not making any judgments about how each of us honors our free will and our sense of responsibility that goes with it.”

Pelosi is also guided by a moral imperative that young people may not understand today — the deep, personal impact of AIDS.

“Some people criticized me for talking about AIDS on my first day in Congress and I realized that it was not just about getting funding for AIDS research and prevention and care but it was about ending discrimination against people with HIV and AIDS,” adding that California has been a “tremendous resource” throughout the years for intellectual, political and economic response to the disease.

Pelosi responds viscerally when asked about losing friends. 

“Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. A little flower girl in my wedding. My dear, dear friends in the community in San Francisco. We were going to two funerals a day. I was visiting people in the hospital all the time, and quite frankly, when I say losing people,” Pelosi says, “I lost friends because I just walked away from them because they were not treating people with HIV and AIDS with respect. They would say to me, ‘I don’t know why you hire that caterer — don’t you know that everybody there has HIV?’ And I’d say, ‘Don’t bother to come to my house anymore if that’s your attitude.’ It just changed my whole view of them.”

Within the span of her life and political career, Pelosi has personally experienced the heartbreak of HIV/AIDS and the political battles to fund and find a cure.

“I’ll never stop missing some of my dearest dear friends from then,” she says. “Of course, we went from funerals to people saying help me make out my will because this is going to end soon, to those very same people looking for a job and then wanting to get married. So everything has improved but I would never have thought 30 years ago when I started all this in Congress that we still wouldn’t have a cure for AIDS. We’ve improved the quality of life, we’ve sustained life. Everything is better but it’s not over, not finished.”

Karen Ocamb is a longtime LGBTQ+ journalist and former news editor for the Los Angeles Blade. This essay is cross-posted from her Substack LGBTQ+ Freedom Fighters.

The United States returned to the polls on Nov. 4, and the results revealed much more than another electoral contest. What unfolded in Virginia, New Jersey, New York, Miami, and California was a moral and political X-ray of a nation voting between fear and hope. Voters spoke from uncertainty, but also from a conviction that the country can still be a place of justice, inclusion, and respect.

The victories of Abigail Spanberger in Virginia and Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey — together with the rise of progressive Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York City, the Democratic surge in Miami, and the approval of Proposition 50 in California — set the tone for an election that sent a clear message to the Trump administration: fear may mobilize, but it cannot sustain power. Citizens voted with their hearts, tired of hate speech and political spectacle, and hopeful for a government that looks toward people rather than power.

New York became the clearest symbol of this shift.

Mamdani, the son of immigrants, Muslim, and unapologetically progressive, centered his victory speech on dignity and solidarity.

“Tonight we made history,” he declared before a diverse crowd. “New York will remain a city of immigrants: a city built by immigrants, powered by immigrants and, as of tonight, led by an immigrant.” But his most powerful message was directed at the city’s most vulnerable residents: “Here, we believe in standing up for those we love, whether you are an immigrant, a member of the trans community, one of the many Black women that Donald Trump has fired from a federal job, a single mom still waiting for the cost of groceries to go down, or anyone else with their back against the wall.”

Those words echoed across the country as a response to years of political regression and legislative attacks on LGBTQ people, and especially on the trans community. Mamdani pledged to expand and protect gender-affirming care, committing public funds to ensure that “every New Yorker has access to the medical treatment they need.” His stance positions New York as a beacon of resistance against the wave of restrictive policies spreading through many states.

The November results carry a profound meaning for those living on the margins of power. For the trans community, these outcomes represent far more than a political breather — they are an affirmation of existence. At a time when official rhetoric has sought to erase identities, deny healthcare, and criminalize bodies, the victory of leaders who champion inclusion rekindles the hope of living without fear. The trans vote, and the broader LGBTQ vote, was not merely civic participation — it was an act of survival and resistance.

The election also spoke to the hearts of immigrant families, people living with HIV or chronic illnesses, racial minorities, and working-class communities struggling to make ends meet. In a nation where so many feel politically invisible, these local victories renew faith in democracy as an instrument of transformation. They remind us that hope is not naïveté — it is the most courageous act of those who choose to keep standing.

Miami, for its part, sent an unexpected message. In a Republican stronghold historically aligned with the Trump administration, the Democratic candidate led the first round and forced a runoff election. In a city defined by its Latinx, Black, immigrant, and LGBTQ diversity, this progressive surge was a break with fear-driven politics and automatic voting patterns. The ballots in South Florida proved that change often begins where few expect it.

For the Trump administration, the message could not be clearer. The country is issuing a warning: human rights are not negotiable. The economy matters, but so does dignity. Voters are demanding real solutions, not slogans; respect, not manipulation; empathy, not imposition.

LGBTQ and trans communities have been the visible face of a resistance that refuses to surrender. Every vote cast was an act of hope in the face of fear; every victory, an answer to symbolic and institutional violence. The words of New York’s new mayor have become a national emblem because they transcend partisanship — they remind the nation that even in darkness, humanity can still be public policy.

The ballots of November spoke with the voices of those long marginalized or erased. They speak through trans people demanding respect, through couples defending their love, through young activists who refuse to be silenced, through believers who fight for an inclusive faith, and through families who still believe in a possible America. In the midst of fear, the nation chose hope. And that hope — imperfect, fragile, yet alive — may be the beginning of a new story: one in which equality is no longer a dream, but a promise fulfilled.

Erin in the Morning on Tuesday reported something worth celebrating: voters decisively rejected candidates who built their campaigns on anti-trans hate. From Virginia to New Jersey to New York City, pro-trans and pro-equality candidates won by wide margins, delivering a stunning rebuke to those — including Democrats — who tried to turn transgender people into a wedge issue. As Erin put it: “conviction, not capitulation, is what wins.”

In recent years, trans people have been caught in a manufactured storm because we make effective political theater. The same playbook that turned immigrants, gay people, and women seeking healthcare into wedge issues has found new life targeting trans people. And like all culture wars, this one’s goal is distraction — keeping voters angry at each other instead of the systems failing them.

I often hear well-meaning people talk about finding “balance” in these debates — that we must weigh competing interests in a pluralistic democracy. And that’s true, to a point. But balance can’t mean deciding whose humanity is negotiable. Power should never come at the expense of another person’s civil or human rights.

That’s why I don’t believe trans concerns need to dominate the discourse — but they must never be abandoned, either. They deserve to be quietly, steadfastly upheld as part of a broader moral and democratic ethic.

If more people understood the human cost of sacrificing trans people for political convenience, they might find better ways. They’d see that being trans — the act of transitioning and living authentically — is not a special interest or a social experiment. It is freedom of expression. It is liberty. It is the pursuit of happiness. And any attack on those rights for trans people signals the erosion of those rights for all Americans.

I wish everyone could see the troves of leaked emails showing exactly how “bathrooms,” “kids,” and “sports” were focus-grouped into political weapons — issues that, for decades, were locally resolved with compassion and common sense, until strategists realized they could divide a nation with them. It’s the stuff of a true-crime podcast. (In fact, TransLash Media’s “The Anti-Trans Hate Machine” has done extraordinary work tracing how these campaigns radicalized even moderate and liberal Americans into adopting the talking points of the extreme right.)

If people truly understood how this machine operates — how far-right strategists deliberately engineered fear and misinformation toward the goal of creating a Christian nationalist state — they might recognize that the threat isn’t trans people at all. It’s the cynical manipulation of our empathy, our faith, and our ideals to maintain a kind of power structure almost nobody in this country actually wants.

Horse-trading human rights has been a feature of American politics since at least the late 19th century, when white Suffragettes sold out Black voters after Reconstruction to secure their own fragile foothold in power — a power that, ironically, never fully materialized. We’ve seen it again and again: from gay rights leaders distancing themselves from trans activists after Stonewall, to civil rights leaders sidelining Bayard Rustin, the gay architect of the March on Washington, out of fear of losing mainstream support. Each time, the doomed logic states that liberation can be negotiated piecemeal, that someone can be left behind now and rescued later. And people wonder why the Left can’t get anything done. 

Surely, diverse, collective power could have negotiated better. As just 0.7 percent of the population, trans people can’t add much weight to any political bargain — and aren’t worth the taxpayer dollars funding hundreds of bills designed to limit our freedoms. But the fact that selling each other out never works for anyone is an existential lesson we must finally learn if we ever hope for real progress. At this point, we have nothing to lose at all by doing it differently. 

Maybe more people than I think already understand that. At least it looks like more are starting to see it — and to vote accordingly. We live in hope.

Still, I won’t lie: it’s been a brutal year. Everything I feared would happen has unfolded faster and worse than I imagined. I didn’t see it coming that trans people would literally be called “domestic extremists,” or that people I once considered heroes — like Gov. Gavin Newsom — would join in scapegoating us.

I’ve had to learn a new skill I never wanted: how to protect my privacy and physical safety while my country considers out loud whether I should be listed as a terrorist for the crimes of existing, for teaching people the etiquette of basic decency toward trans people, and for joining a movement to secure our place in the American Dream.

Once I got over the shock, fear, and most of the anxiety of all that, I had a realization I didn’t expect: I can handle anything now.

It’s a strange kind of empowerment, tempered by bitter sadness and deep disappointment. But “power is the point,” right? If the far right — and the everyday liberals who pre-complied with them by dropping trans rights — have taught me anything, it’s that I am far more powerful than any of the doomed ways they can imagine to stop me or my community.

Because freedom of expression, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness aren’t just founding tenets of this nation — they are the heartbeat of trans people, who have existed across every era and culture and will never cease to do so. You can repress us, legislate against us, or even rename us as threats. But you only reveal, through your attempts, how powerful we really are, because we never perish. 

To my friends who want progress, as we desperately do: stop wasting energy trying to silence us. Embrace us, and harness our power toward achieving the goals that matter to all of us. 

Scott Turner Schofield is an actor, writer, producer, speaker, and trans activist who transitioned 25 years ago and followed their calling to become an advocate.