Victories signal new gay, transfriendly era
When Dr. Rachel Levine became the first transgender person to be confirmed by the Senate, for the role of the assistant secretary of health, it was a breakthrough moment for LGBTQ equality in government. Aria Sa’id, the executive director of San Francisco’s Transgender District, called the March confirmation a major victory for the trans community.
“How often do we ever hear about trans people being promoted into positions of decisionmaking and power and being equal in those spaces to talk about the issues our community is facing,” Sa’id said. “As we’re seeing more trans people decide to be changemakers in government, America is seeing the breadth of who we are beyond the surface issue of gender identity.”
Likewise, when Pete Buttigieg was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as transportation secretary in early February, he made history as the first openly gay Cabinet member to go through the process.
“For those of us who have been in this space with this push for so long, it feels very good,” said state Sen. Susan Eggman, DStockton. “It will just be one more step of ac
“For those of us who have been in this space with this push for so long, it feels very good.”
State Sen. Susan Eggman, DStockton
knowledgment and integration into society.”
And it’s much more than just Levine and Buttigieg.
The Victory Institute’s 2020 Census of Out LGBTQ Elected Officials puts the number of openly LGBTQ elected officials at 843, a growth of 88% since their first census in 2017. Those years have also seen a 40% increase in elected trans women, including Sarah McBride, who was sworn in on Jan. 9 as Delaware state senator, the first openly transgender state senator in the country.
Those numbers have some politicians wondering whether we’re seeing the beginning of a new era for LGBTQ people in politics.
“I’m old enough to remember when Roberta Achtenberg was nominated by President (Bill) Clinton, she had a terrible time getting confirmed,” said state Sen. Scott Wiener, a gay man. Achtenberg was appointed assistant secretary for the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity in 1993, the first openly LGBTQ person to be appointed and confirmed to a position within a Cabinet office. “The Republicans went after her hard as an out lesbian,” said Wiener, DSan Francisco.
Or compare the Senate confirmations of Buttigieg and Levine to the experience of James Hormel in the 1990s, when Clinton sought to appoint him ambassador, first to Fiji and then to Luxembourg. The process began in 1994 but was stalled by thenSenate Majority Leader Trent Lott, RMiss., with backlash to the appointment by rightwing antigay groups. Buttigieg referenced Hormel’s treatment by the Senate when he accepted the transportation secretary nomination and reached out to the ambassador.
“The ultimate reason that I decided to go through what I went through is that it required Senate confirmation to send me out as a personal representative of the president,” said Hormel, a longtime Bay Area resident and philanthropist. “There had never been a Senate confirmation process (for a gay person) at that level before. When (Buttigieg) said that as a 17yearold boy he was influenced (watching the hearing), that was the confirmation. What more could one ask? That was the ultimate result of what I did.”
Yet, even with these advancements, LGBTQ politicians are still dealing with homophobia. San Francisco Supervisor Rafael Mandelman said he still receives homophobic messages on social media, although he contends he’s only had “an amusebouche of antigay hatred” compared to what other openly LGBTQ politicians have historically dealt with.
“There’s no doubt homophobia is alive and well in politics,” said Tom Ammiano, a gay former school board member, San Francisco supervisor and state Assembly member. “But if you look at the long game starting with Harvey Milk just calling for people to come out, we have seen progress.”
For an example of how things have changed for LGBTQ people in politics, look at San Francisco’s 2018 mayoral election, which was won by London Breed. Mark Leno, a former San Francisco supervisor and mayoral candidate who was also one of the first two openly gay men elected to the state Senate, said his experience as a candidate in that race was basically absent the kinds of homophobic instances he’d encountered in earlier campaigns.
“I woke up to a quote from London’s campaign manager one day in The Chronicle who challenged that I could be an agent of change,” Leno said. “Her comment was, ‘How can Leno be an agent of change? He’s just an old white guy?’ And I thought, I’ve lived almost 70 years thinking I was a Jewish faggot. And now I’m just an old white guy?”
More recently, McBride’s campaign in Delaware did not center the candidate’s identity as a trans woman in its narrative, a move that in itself can be seen as a form of progress for a candidate from a minority community. In an interview with the Daily Beast, McBride said that she didn’t choose to run as “the transgender state senator” in her campaign.
“I’m running to be a state senator who was born and raised in this district, a state senator who is a caregiver, a state senator who is working every single day to ensure more Delawareans get the health care they need, and are supported in the challenges and crises they face with meaningful policies,” McBride said.
For Ammiano, though, maintaining that arc of progress represented by candidates such as McBride is contingent on LGBTQ politicians continuing to expand diversity in their own ranks, as well as aligning with other marginalized communities.
Honey Mahogany, a legislative aide to Supervisor Matt Haney as well as the first trans person to serve on the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee, said that while things have improved, there’s hope that President Biden’s administration will push for even more gender and ethnic diversity among LGBTQ politicians.
With all these advancements, Wiener now does not find it inconceivable that he may see a LGBTQ president.
“Up until 18 years ago no gay man had ever been elected to the California Legislature,” Wiener said. “To be secretary of transportation is so powerful and impactful, it sends a message, particularly to LGBTQ young people, that you could do anything.”