News
LGBTQ people are leaving Orthodox Judaism behind
‘I started to, slowly but surely, take back my own narrative’
Uncloseted Media published this story on April 28.
By EMMA PAIDRA | Shlomo Satt remembers first thinking he might be gay at 13 years old after seeing an article about gay marriage in the newspaper. Growing up in an Orthodox Jewish community on Long Island, New York, Satt immediately felt anxious about what this could mean for his future.
“I think that’s when I started thinking, ‘Oh, am I that? Am I gay?’” Satt, now 30, told Uncloseted Media and GAY TIMES.
As Satt came to realize he was gay, his anxiety skyrocketed. He was aware that only half of Orthodox Jews — and 20 percent of ultra-Orthodox Jews — are accepting of homosexuality.
“In my community, it’s very shunned to be gay,” says Satt. “So it was really, really, hard for me to accept that I was attracted to other men, because I was like, ‘It’s not what the Torah says you’re allowed to be.’”
Unlike more progressive denominations, Orthodox Judaism advocates for a more literal understanding of the Hebrew Bible, known as the Torah. For example, verses such as Leviticus 18:22, which states that “You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination,” are more likely to be interpreted verbatim by Orthodox rabbis.
“One of the hallmarks of growing up Orthodox and queer is feeling really alone,” says Satt. “It’s not something we talked about.”
Stories like Satt’s represent what’s motivating LGBTQ people to leave Orthodox Judaism. While little research has been done, one 2023 study from Brooklyn College CUNY found that only about 15 percent of LGBTQ people left Orthodox Judaism directly because of their sexual orientation or their religious views on homosexuality. Other reasons for leaving the denomination included religious views on homosexuality, being judged, bullied or alienated, emotional abuse, trauma, wanting more freedom, and mental health issues.
“It was really hard for me to engage in [Orthodox Judaism] and not feel deep shame or trauma,” says Satt. “That’s why I left.”
Growing up Orthodox
Unlike many Orthodox Jewish families, Satt’s parents allowed him some access to technology and even played secular music like The Beatles. Still, he had no television in the house growing up and zero education about LGBTQ people.
“I didn’t even know that someone could be gay until a friend told me in sixth grade,” he says. “For most of my upbringing, it wasn’t like homophobia was espoused. It just was literally not talked about.”
After the newspaper article triggered Satt’s “gay awakening,” he struggled to keep his feelings inside. “It was really hard for me to accept that I was attracted to other men,” he says. “All I wanted was just to be straight.”
Staying silent about his emotions took a toll. He worried that his dreams of having a big Jewish family would be unattainable. “I wanted to have a wife and kids and be normal within my community, and it felt like I couldn’t have any of that if I was gay,” he says.
By around age 15, Satt’s stress levels reached a breaking point. “I had a night where I was just really, really depressed and crying to God about my sexuality. It was really hard for me to cry at that point, because I was so not tuned in with myself.” He decided to meet with a school psychologist who was part of the Orthodox community. After telling the psychologist he might be gay, the response he received was, “We can fix that.”
Satt remembers initially feeling immense relief at the thought that his sexuality could be cured. “I was so joyful,” says Satt. For the next three and a half years, he worked with members of the Orthodox community who practiced conversion therapy.
The turning point
This therapy, which has been widely discredited for decades, culminated with Satt doing a retreat through an organization called Brothers Road, where participants were encouraged to reenact their trauma in front of each other. He was forced to beat up a punching bag with a metal baseball bat, pretending it was his mother. “I don’t know what the purpose of this was, but it was horrible. And doing this for 35 adult people, it’s totally insane and super humiliating.”
After the therapy failed, Satt began to question the negative messaging he had been taught about being gay. “The things that are more innate to me, I believe, are from God. I didn’t choose to be gay, I just was gay,” he remembers thinking.
With the help of a licensed trauma specialist, Satt reconstructed his relationship to Judaism. He is still Jewish today, and has plans to pursue rabbinical school, but he left Orthodoxy behind. “I actually started really heavily diving into spirituality as a means of meaning in my life, as a means of connecting with my Jewish roots and my tradition, but in entirely different ways. One hundred percent progressive, 100 percent equitable, only learning with people who conferred my identities,” says Satt, who now identifies as a “post-denominational Jew.”
This transition hasn’t been easy. Satt has lost all contact with his family and describes losing the relationship with them as “the hardest thing” in his life.
Unfortunately, Satt’s experience isn’t unusual. An article written by the founder of Jewish Queer Youth (JQY), a nonprofit mental health organization, found that from 2016 to 2023, over 2000 queer youth from Orthodox families accessed support services provided by JQY. And amongst closeted Jewish Orthodox gay men, concerns about the impact of their sexuality on family relationships are a common theme.
Despite this, Satt says he’s experienced immense joy since accepting his sexuality, healing through therapy with an affirming Orthodox rabbi, and having a Jewish wedding where he married his long-term partner. “I started to, slowly but surely, take back my own narrative and live the life that I wanted.”
The rabbinical perspective
While one 2025 study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior found that some ultra-Orthodox communities are moving away from uniform rejection of homosexuality, gay rights remain controversial in many Orthodox communities. For example, Chabad, a major movement within Orthodox Judaism, states on its website that when it comes to queer desires, “even if it burns inside for a lifetime, the best thing for you, for your health, and for your ultimate satisfaction in life is to subdue and re-channel that desire.”
Mark Dratch, an Orthodox rabbi in Jerusalem, says that there is a limit to the accommodations an Orthodox synagogue can make.
“The sense of alienation, the sense of depression and the person’s emotional and sometimes physical well-being, that’s part of a rabbi’s responsibility,” Dratch told Uncloseted Media and GAY TIMES. “So I think there’s room to be welcoming and embracing, while at the same time living with this kind of dissonance of what tradition requires.”
Though Dratch ultimately views queerness as being in opposition to Orthodox Judaism, he still believes it is his duty to try and support LGBTQ congregants. “I may not like this part of you, but if I don’t embrace you, then we’re going to lose the other 95 percent of your Jewish commitment,” he says.
Dratch says LGBTQ Jews would be welcome to attend services in his synagogue, but he wouldn’t marry a gay couple. “It may not be good enough for some LGBT people in these communities,” he says. “They want to be more than tolerated.”
Marceline’s story
It’s not just gay people who struggle. As early as 9 years old, Marceline Franco locked herself in her bathroom and wrapped a towel around her head, trying to picture herself as a woman. Assigned male at birth and raised in a Syrian Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn, N.Y. Franco felt intense guilt for wishing she was a girl.
“I desperately, more than anything, wanted to be a woman,” says Franco, now 30 years old. “I would sit in the bathroom as my only safe space to cry and pray and beg.”
Staying quiet about wanting to dress as a woman and go by a girl’s name put an immense amount of stress on Franco. “One of my fantasies as a kid was that I could wake up in a woman’s body. But in the bed next to me was a clone of me that could live out the rest of my life as my family and community would have wanted,” she says. “I felt horrible that I would rob them of me.”
A shared experience with conversion therapy
By the time Franco entered college, she decided to see an ultra-Orthodox therapist. “Over the next four and a half years, I participated in some version of conversion therapy,” she says. “[My therapist’s] view of it was more of a fetish/escape, and that it was something that I could learn to control and basically bury.”
Franco’s therapist taught her to think of herself in four parts. When Franco suggested that there was a fifth part — a girl — her therapist shut the idea down. Franco found the elimination of this part of her troubling. “It was the erasure of my transness with this person in a professional setting, which is deeply, deeply problematic,” says Franco.
Similar to Satt, conversion therapy didn’t work. And after watching queer comedian Hannah Gadsby’s comedy special “Nanette” for a college class, Franco began to question her therapist even more and started reconsidering her religious upbringing.
“I no longer was able to hold the belief that the Torah was true,” she says. “I realized that I may be holding onto religion to protect myself from coming to terms with the grief of being alone in the world … and justifying staying closeted.”
Franco ultimately left organized Judaism behind.
Six months later, she came out as trans. In order to explore her gender, she cut contact with her family. However, upon trying to reestablish a relationship with them as a woman, things did not go well. “I was nearly barred from my own grandfather’s funeral and I was barred from a family Shabbat meal mourning him. Two weeks later I was kicked out of my cousin’s wedding for showing up dressed as myself,” she says.
“The grief is immeasurable. It is nearly impossible to mourn people and relationships that are actively still living in this world. … And to move through all these major life moments alone has been really difficult.”
Despite this loss, Franco still practices elements of Judaism that resonate with her and has found joy and meaning in her transition. “Once I just started speaking my mind, saying how I felt, it stopped being confusing. I stopped hating myself for having these feelings. I just started loving myself.”
How Satt and Franco learned to move forward from religious trauma
Both Satt and Franco left the Orthodox communities they grew up in.
Still, Satt says Judaism has been the healing force for him. “It brought me back into a relationship with God, The Infinite, The Sum of All Good,” he says. “It ultimately made me feel very connected to myself, to humanity and to my heritage.”
Satt is thrilled that some rabbis are fighting for more inclusivity in the Orthodox Jewish space, but unless more begin to follow in their footsteps, he believes LGBTQ Jews will continue to disaffiliate from the denomination.
Though Franco no longer practices Judaism, she still finds meaning in some of the lessons she learned when she was.
“When my therapist was my mentor, she had me start to look at the world as having divine providence. And I did see a lot of that in my life. To this day, I still do,” she says. “And I just have reinterpreted that God doesn’t care that I’m Jewish or not. God loves me as I am.”
Delaware
Delaware fines Rehoboth bar $15,000 for discriminating against trans woman
Hideout told patron she had to use men’s room due to gender marker on driver’s license
The Delaware Human and Civil Rights Commission voted to fine Hideout Arcade Bar & Grille $15,000 last month due to a discrimination complaint filed by a trans woman over her use of the bathroom.
Katie Sorber, a transgender woman, said that on April 5, 2023, she was stopped by employees and told she could only use the men’s bathroom due to the “male” gender marker on her driver’s license. This occurred after Sorber presented her ID upon entering the bar and ordering a drink.
Sorber took to Facebook to complain about her experience at the bar after she was told to use the men’s bathroom.
On April 12, 2023, Sorber returned to the Hideout but was barred from entering due to her post on social media.
Following Sorber’s post, Bryan Derrickson, the owner of Hideout Arcade Bar & Grille, allegedly began enforcing a policy in which patrons had to use the bathroom that corresponded to the gender marker on their ID.
Derrickson was ordered to pay $10,000 to Sorber, $5,000 to the Special Administration Fund, as well as conduct anti-discrimination training with employees, remove the ban on Sorber from the establishment, and revise the bar’s bathroom policy.
The commission ruled that the bar and Derrickson had wrongfully discriminated against Sorber on the basis of her gender.
Derrickson’s explanations for the denial included safety concerns, a third-party patron complaint, and a reference to the health code. The panel found this to be inconsistent and lacking factual support upon cross-examination.
The case was evaluated under the Delaware Equal Accommodations Law, which explicitly prohibits discrimination and retaliation in places of public accommodation based on gender identity.
This was the second time that the bar has been fined for discriminating against a transgender woman. The bar received a $2,000 penalty in September of last year for denying a transgender woman entry in 2023.
Half of the fine went to Kathy Carpenter Brown, the trans woman who experienced the discrimination. Brown is the founder of TransLiance, an LGBTQ+ advocacy group in Delaware.
Obituary
Music icon and dear LGBTQ friend Dolly Parton remembered
‘Queen of Country’ died on Tuesday in Nashville
I don’t want to say goodbye.
To be honest, my first impression of music icon Dolly Parton was similar to the scathing look the demur Jane Fonda gave the boss’s secretary in one of my favorite funny feminist films ever, “9 to 5.”
Fonda’s aghast up-and-down scrutiny was pure unspoken tsk tsk condescension toward this bubbly dumb-blond wigged white trash colleague — until she looked down at her own flat chest. For a moment, Fonda suggested a hint of envy, at which we laughed. I felt a sigh of relief at not having to carry around all the weight Dolly Parton’s boobs implied.
Those boobs, those big blond country-western wigs, and her seemingly irrepressible humor were as much a part of Dolly Parton’s brand as was her incomparable voice and the songs she wrote that moved generations. In 1974, I longed to love someone as much as Dolly loved the person for whom she wrote her goodbye, “I Will Always Love You.”
Surely, someone with that big a heart was bigger than the tight bodice society forced innovative go-getters like Dolly Parton to squeeze into.
In fact, Parton’s difficult backstory of childhood poverty in Sevierville, Tenn., living in a cabin with no running water and 11 siblings — and an ambition infused with a love-your-neighbor Christian upbringing — created a depth of character that used smarts, ingenuity and humor to thwart her stereotype-blinded detractors.
“Well, I graduated [high school] on a Friday night and headed out on a Saturday morning,” Parton told ABC News’s Robin Roberts in an extensive interview in advance of the 2019 CMA Awards. “As I make jokes about it with my matching luggage, those four paper bags from the same grocery store. I thought, well, I can’t be any poorer than I already am, and I’m a girl. I’ll find some boy that’ll take me to Shoney’s … I thought I’m not going to go hungry.”
Like Billie Jean King and other female professionals, Dolly Parton fought hard to get paid what she was worth.
“It’s not all about money,” she said. “I count my blessings more than I count my money, but I need to count my money, too.”
Tough times taught her how to be tough and funny. “Well, I don’t think people can live in this world without going through times like that,” Parton told Roberts. “People always look at me; they always say, ‘Oh, you just always seem to be so happy.’ I said, ‘That’s the Botox.’ No, but seriously, I’m a very sensitive person. I feel everything to the core.”
That’s what makes her famous 1977 interview with ABC’s Barbara Walters so compelling. Walters had become infamous for making her interview subjects cry after asking tough, prying, sometimes rude questions that she said her audience wanted answered.
“You don’t have to look like this; you’re very beautiful. You don’t have to wear the blonde wigs; you don’t have to wear the extreme clothes, right?” Walters asked the brightly dressed Parton.
Parton delivered a master class in grace and class.
“It’s certainly a choice,” Parton replied. “I don’t like to be like everybody else. I’ve often made the statement that I would never stoop so low as to be fashionable. That’s the easiest thing in the world to do.”
Chuckling yet? Parton wanted attention, then she could dazzle them with talent. “Once they got past the shock of the ridiculous way I looked, then they would see there’s parts of me to be appreciated. I’m very real where it counts … and that’s inside,” Dolly Parton told Barbara Walters. “Show business is a money-making joke, and I just always like telling jokes.”
Walters then asked Parton — the beloved star with 19 studio albums and a slew of awards won over a decade in the male-dominated music business: “Do you ever feel like you’re a joke, that people make fun of you?”
Parton was the personification of composure.
“I know they make fun of me. But actually, all these years people have thought the joke was on me, but it’s actually been on the public. I know exactly what I’m doing, and I can change it at any time. I make more jokes about myself than anybody,” Parton said.
“I am sure of myself as a person. I am sure of my talent. I’m sure of my love for life,” Parton said. “And I’m very content. I like the kind of person that I am. So I can afford to piddle around and do-diddle around with make-up and clothes and stuff. Because I am secure with myself.”
Game, set, match to Parton.
In another ABC interview in 2012, Parton expanded on that over-the-top signature style which she adopted after seeing the town tramp.
“There was this woman, we won’t call her names, but she was beautiful,” she told ABC News Nightline. “I had never seen anybody, you know, with the yellow hair all piled up and the red lipstick and the rouge and the high-heeled shoes, and I thought, ‘This is what I want to look like.’”
As the image implies, there were constant rumors that she was secretly involved with any male within inches — as well as a secret lesbian life with her oldest childhood pal, Judy Ogle. She denied the rumor — she was married to Carl Dean for 58 years. He died in March 2025.
Dolly Parton died peacefully on Tuesday, Aug. 25, 2026, at the age of 80 in Nashville after a “brief battle with cancer,” her team wrote in a statement to People.
“Our beloved Dolly Parton spent her life and career bringing joy, laughter, hope, and integrity into everything she touched. Her unmatched generosity reached the lives of countless people whom she would never meet, yet she was always there to offer a helping hand,” they wrote.
“Whether it be the hundreds of millions of books donated through her invaluable Imagination Library or funding research that helped create a lifesaving vaccine used around the world, Dolly’s unconditional love for all people was the guiding force for her lasting impact. After bravely facing a brief battle with cancer, Dolly departed her Earthly life today at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, surrounded by loved ones,” the statement concluded.
The music world is in mourning. And news outlets are overflowing with tributes. Few of them mention us. In fact, one note of criticism for some is a precise example of that “unconditional love for all people” her team talked about.
“The ’80s — a decade she kicked off in grand fashion with the working woman’s anthem ‘9 to 5’ — brought Parton some of her greatest mainstream success, but the climate of the times also conspired to reduce her to a punchline and a caricature: The self-made country-pop queen who had pulled herself up by her bra straps. She played along, as an act of self-preservation, but it is a consolation to know that she lived long enough for her reputation as a songwriter to rise considerably in the 21st century,” Lindsay Zoladz wrote in her “appraisal” of Dolly Parton, who “had the voice, and concerns, of an Earth Angel” for the New York Times.
Damn, bitch! Have you never even seen a Dolly Parton drag queen? There’s almost a cottage industry devoted to Dolly. And Dolly knew — and loved it! She even participated in a Dolly Parton drag contest at a gay LA bar — which she lost!
“They had a bunch of Chers and Dollys that year, so I just over-exaggerated — made my beauty mark bigger, the eyes bigger, the hair bigger, everything,” Parton laughingly told ABC News Nightline. “All these beautiful drag queens had worked for weeks and months getting their clothes. So I just got in the line, and I just walked across, and they just thought I was some little short gay guy … but I got the least applause.”
Dolly Parton lost the Dolly Parton look-alike contest in an LA gay bar! But she hasn’t lost the ineffable connection to her fans — whom she understood, felt, and fought for — including protecting “Gay Day” at Dollywood in Pigeon Forge, Tenn.
“When it first started, there were people giving us threats; I still get threats,” Parton told ABC News. “But like I said, I’m in business. I just don’t feel like I have to explain myself. I love everybody.”
That’s what I saw when Dolly Parton arrived and smiled through an onslaught of paparazzi and gay fanboys at an APLA Commitment to Life event.
Oddly though, as a reporter, my fixation was on Parton’s “date,” her gay manager Sandy Gallin, who seemed to rarely show up publicly with his supposed posse, controversially dubbed the “Velvet Gay Mafia.”
The late gay AIDS advocate Dana Miller, who was on the APLA board, wrote a piece for In Los Angeles Magazine about the Four Warriors of AIDS fundraising: David Geffen, Barry Diller, Sandy Gallin, and Jeffrey Katzenberg.
“It was the early ’90s, and we were in the second decade of AIDS with absolutely no hope in sight,” Miller wrote. “It was then I discovered the warriors, and it was amazing. Gay and straight, they were the ones who for almost a decade came together in living rooms and storefronts to provide what our government didn’t. My list of warriors is long, yet this is the tale of four particular individuals who, for years, I closely watched working behind the scenes to make a difference in the quality of life of men, women, and children they would never know.”
After Gallin died in 2017 at age 76, columnist Billy Masters wrote a tribute in the Los Angeles Blade that expanded on that theme – and included a section on Dolly Parton, with whom he formed Sandollar Productions in 1985. Sandollar Productions, with Howard Rosenman, produced the 1990 Oscar winning documentary “Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt” that raised global awareness about AIDS.
“While Gallin’s client list was vast and varied, he especially loved his divas. A special place in his heart was reserved solely for Dolly Parton. The two met after Dolly asked singer Mac Davis who should help with her career. Davis said, ‘You should talk to Sandy Gallin — he’s my manager.’ Sandy had one goal — to make Dolly a mainstream star. The first thing he did was set up a recording session for the song ‘Here You Come Again,’”Masters wrote.
“Dolly was hesitant. She said, ‘A monkey could sing this song and have a hit with it.’ She was very nervous that it would turn off the country market, which she was very loyal to.’ Gallin made a deal with her — if the song wasn’t No. 1 on the pop charts AND the country charts, he’d never get involved in her musical decisions again. Dolly took the deal — and lost,” Masters wrote. “From then on, she and Sandy were inseparable. They considered each other beyond best friends and almost soul mates. ‘My husband didn’t love to travel, and Sandy was gay, and he did,’ said Dolly.”
Dolly Parton also talked about Gallin in an interview with Apple Music Country’s Proud Radio: “Sandy and I just clicked like nobody’s business,” Parton told host Hunter Kelly. “He was like my best gay bud. … We [went to] Studio 54. We’d sit on the couch and watch all the craziness. But we were all involved in the fun of it, and it was great.”
“I really owe him so much,” Parton added.
But, contrary to what Dolly Parton sings in “9 to 5,” it’s not all taking and no giving. Dolly Parton told the KKK that she welcomes gay people to Dollywood. And in 1991, when gay men were dying of AIDS by the thousands, and some Southern Christian leaders said AIDS was God’s punishment for homosexuality, Dolly Parton wrote and sang one of the first country songs to include “gay” and Christianity: “Some are preachers, some are gay … But not a one is turned away when it’s family.”
She later got an Oscar nod for “Travelin’ Thru,” a song for the transgender film “Transamerica.”
In 2023, after her home state of Tennessee passed anti-trans and anti-drag laws, Parton said she knew how deeply it hurt LGBTQ people, including in her own family and life, to be attacked for who they are.
“I know and love them all, and I do not judge,” she said. “They cannot help that any more than I can help being Dolly Parton.”
By the end of “9 to 5,” I realized that I had been the judgmental one with stereotype-blinders. I enjoyed learning how to get bold things done while expressing yourself with authentic joy. But unfortunately the theme and song are still applicable today.
Thank you, Dolly Parton.
District of Columbia
Push to elect more LGBTQ ANC members yields results
31 of 43 known LGBTQ ANC members elected in 2024 seeking re-election
A 2026 list of candidates released by the D.C. Board of Elections shows that 31 of the 43 known LGBTQ candidates who won election in 2024 as Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners have filed the required petition signatures to be placed on the ballot this year to run for re-election.
The Washington Blade reported in 2024 that 43 known LGBTQ candidates won election to ANC seats that year in the November election
In a related development, the president of Capital Stonewall Democrats, D.C.’s largest local LGBTQ political group, said the group this year has recruited at least 39 LGBTQ candidates to run for Advisory Neighborhood Commission seats in the city’s Nov. 3 general election.
The group’s president, Stevie McCarty, an incumbent ANC member in the city’s Shaw neighborhood who is running for re-election, said the 39 candidates and possibly more responded to the group’s Queering ANCs campaign launched on July 7 that includes a website with detailed instructions for how best to run for an ANC seat.
“Since launching in early July, the site has drawn more than 20,000 views, and 39 candidates have used it to actually run,” McCarty said in a statement. He said he wasn’t sure if all the 39 candidates wanted to be identified as LGBTQ, and he was reviewing the list of incumbent LGBTQ ANC members who won election in 2024 to determine if any of the 39 candidates recruited were among those incumbents. He said he was not ready to release the names of the 39 candidates he said his group recruited to run for an ANC seat.
If none of the 39 candidates recruited by Capital Stonewall Democrats are among the 31 known LGBTQ ANC incumbents running for re-election, it would mean at least 70 LGBTQ ANC candidates will be on the city’s November election ballot.
McCarty said Capital Stonewall Democrats will send candidate questionnaires to the known LGBTQ ANC candidates as part of its process for endorsing candidates in the November election. He said he expects the group to help campaign for and provide financial support for the ANC candidates it endorses.
The D.C. local government is believed to be unique among U.S. cities in currently having 46 Advisory Neighborhood Commissions consisting of 345 single member districts in neighborhoods throughout the city in which unpaid Advisory Neighborhood Commissioners are elected for two-year terms.
The commissions are charged with considering a wide range of policies and programs impacting their neighborhoods, including traffic, parking, recreation, street improvements, zoning, liquor licenses, and economic development. Although ANCs do not have authority to set or reject policies or actions by city agencies, the agencies are required to give “great weight” to ANC recommendations, according to the law creating the ANCs.
“As an ANC member, I know firsthand how these seats shape our neighborhoods, from housing and public safety to sanitation,” McCarty said in the Capital Stonewall Democrats statement announcing the launch of the Queering ANCs campaign in July. “I’m proud to lead this effort to ensure more LGBTQ+ Washingtonians see themselves as leaders in their communities,” he said.
Some local LGBTQ activists, who asked not to be identified, said they were not aware of a significant boost in new LGBTQ ANC candidates from the Queering ANCs campaign. However, they praised the effort to recruit more LGBTQ ANC candidates and said the campaign could have yielded more candidates if it had started sooner than less than a month before the deadline for becoming a candidate.
McCarty said Capital Stonewall Democrats will continue to recruit LGBTQ D.C. residents to run as write-in candidates for ANC seats, especially in the 45 single member districts in which no candidate will be on the ballot. The Board of Elections candidate list shows many ANC single member districts that have just one candidate running without an opponent.
Following is a list of 33 known LGBTQ ANC candidates running in D.C.’s November 2026 election and the single member districts and neighborhoods in which they are running. All but two – Vita Rangel and J. Swiderski – are incumbents running for re-election. The Washington Blade will update this list if and when more LGBTQ ANC candidates become known.
1A04 – (Columbia Heights) Jeremy Sherman, he/him
1A10 – (Columbia Heights) Vita Rangel, she/ her [non-incumbent candidate]
1B03 – (Columbia Heights/U Street) J. Swiderski, they/he [non-incumbent candidate]
Jamie S. Sycamore, he/him
1B06 – (Columbia Heights/Meridian Hill) Miguel Trindade Deramo, he/him
1B07 – (U Street) Matthew Holden, he/him
1E01 – (Park View) Brad Howard, he/him
2B02 – (Dupont Circle) Jeffrey Rueckgauer, he/him
2B03 – (Dupont Circle) Vincent Slatt, he/him
2C01 – (Penn Quarter) Michael D. Shankle, he/him
2F05 – (Logan Circle) Christopher Dyer, he/him
2F07 – (Logan Circle) Kevin Cataldo, he/him
2G01 – (Shaw)Parker Griffin, he/him Howard Garrett, he/him
2G02 – (Shaw) Alexander ‘Alex’ Padro, he/him
2G04 – (Shaw) Steven McCarty, he/him
3B06 – (Wesley Heights) S. Robert Rodriquez, he/him
3F05 – (Van Ness/Cleveland Park) Adrian Jesus Iglesias, he/him
4B01 – (Takoma) Doug Payton, he/him
4B10 – (Lamond Riggs) Jinin Berry, she/her
4C06 – (Petworth) Christen Boss Hayes, they/them
4E02 – (16th Street Heights) Vince Micone, he/him
5B04 – (Brookland) Ra Amin, he/him
5B05 – (Brookland) Mónica Martínez López, she/her
5D05 – (Trinidad) Salvador Sauceda-Guzman, he/him
5F06 – (Eckington) Joe Bishop-Henchman, he/him
6B03 – (Capitol Hill) David Sobelsohn, he/him
6B09 – (Capitol Hill/Barney Circle) Karen Hughes, she/her
7C01 – (Deanwood) Brian Glover, he/him
7C03 – (Lincoln Heights) Carlos Richardson, he/him
7C04 (Deanwood) Anthony Lorenzo Green
7C08 – (Capitol View) Brandon M. Scott, he/him
8A01 – (Fairlawn) Tom Donohue, he, him
8B06 – (Garfield Heights) Marcus Thomas Hickman, he/him
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