As the pro-LGBTQ+ Biden administration winds down and the LGBTQ+ community prepares for battle with an incoming Trump presidency that has pledged a myriad of anti-LGBTQ+ policies, there were some moments to celebrate on Capitol Hill.
New LGBTQ+ representation in Congress
Three LGBTQ+ women just made congressional herstory. Delaware’s Sarah McBride, Washington’s Emily Randall and Texas’s Julie Johnson were sworn in to the 119th Congress on Jan. 3.
Rep. Sarah McBride (D-DE) has taken the media spotlight for weeks since she became the first openly transgender person elected to Congress. Her landslide victory has won her numerous accolades, including as PGN’s 2024 Person of the Year. McBride served two terms as a Delaware state senator before winning the state’s only House seat in November.
McBride also suffered a wave of attacks from the GOP Congress, most notably from Rep. Nancy Mace and Speaker Mike Johnson, both of whom claimed McBride is a man and as such cannot use the women’s bathroom facilities in the Capitol. Mace sponsored a bill to ban anyone AMAB from using the women’s room and Johnson affirmed it.
Despite this rocky start, Jan. 3 was full of celebration. In addition to McBride’s historic win, Rep. Randall (D-WA) became the first out queer Latina in Congress and Rep. Johnson (D-TX) became the first out LGBTQ+ person from the South elected to Congress.
There are now 13 openly LGBTQ+ elected officials serving in Congress: 12 in the House, including these new members and Wisconsin’s Tammy Baldwin in the Senate. Kyrsten Sinema, the first out bisexual in the House and Senate, declined to run for re-election in 2024.
Laphonza Butler, a Black lesbian activist appointed by Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom to fill out the remainder of Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s term after she died in 2023, also declined to run for election. Butler was only the third Black woman to be a U.S. senator and the second out lesbian after Baldwin. Former House rep Adam Schiff, who was a member of the January 6 Committee, was elected to the seat in November.
Randall was elected to the Washington state Senate in 2018 by only 104 votes, flipping a seat previously held by a Republican. A community organizer and health-care advocate, Randall said at the time of that election that she had decided to run after Donald Trump was elected in 2016.
Randall was one of two openly LGBTQ+ women in the Washington State Senate, serving with Sen. Claire Wilson. As senator, Randall focused on increasing access to better behavioral health and reproductive health, affordable housing, and public safety. She also served as whip for the state senate majority.
According to a 2022 story in the Bay Area Reporter, “Randall, 36, managed institutional partnerships for the San Francisco AIDS Foundation in 2015 and 2016. Her time at the agency coincided with its opening the Strut health clinic in the heart of the city’s LGBTQ Castro district.”
B.A.R. added, “She and her partner of 17 years, Alison Leahey, had called West Oakland home. The women first met at Wellesley College in Massachusetts and eventually moved together out west.”
Randall told B.A.R, that Hillary Clinton’s loss in 2016 was “like the saddest funeral I have ever been at.”
A longtime attorney in Austin, Rep. Johnson (D-TX) is one of Dallas County’s first two openly gay elected officials, and the first member of the Texas House with a spouse of the same gender. She beat Tea Party Republican Matt Rinaldi in Texas District 115 in 2018 in a tight race.
At the time she said, “I got elected not because I’m part of the LGBT community but because I have a strong commitment to public education and I want to solve health care and I want to work on issues that affect all Texans…. I love my wife very much, and I’m proud of who I am, but I’m a lot of things. I’m excited to bring all of me to the Texas Legislature.”
In November, Johnson won the seat vacated by Colin Allred, who ran for Senate against incumbent Ted Cruz. Her website states, “As a legislator, Julie Johnson has earned a reputation for going toe to toe with the crooked and powerful. Last session, she helped kill 76 of 77 anti-LGBTQ bills. She authored the historic Live Well Texas bill, which would have expanded Medicaid in Texas, gaining bipartisan support from 9 Republican Co-Sponsors, and as Vice-Chair of the Women’s Health Caucus fights on the front lines for reproductive rights.”
Johnson came out as a lesbian in 1991. She and her wife, Susan Moster, married in San Francisco in 2014. The couple have two children. Johnson is the first out member of Congress from the South or Southwest.
Mark Takano to lead Equality Caucus
Gay U.S. Rep. Mark Takano (D-CA) will chair the LGBTQ Congressional Equality Caucus in the newly seated 119th Congress. Takano’s role positions the California representative at the center of an emerging fight over transgender rights being waged by Donald Trump, Speaker Mike Johnson and the GOP.
The Equality Caucus is a coalition of U.S. representatives dedicated to protecting the rights of the LGBTQ+ community in Congress.
“Over the next several years, we will see a constant barrage of attacks on the rights and dignity of the queer community — especially against our transgender siblings — by the Trump Administration and the Republican majorities in both the House and Senate,” Takano said. “As Chair of the Equality Caucus, I will lead our coalition of openly-LGBTQI+ members and our allies in the fight to both defend the queer community and push equality forward, including by reintroducing the Equality Act. I’m incredibly thankful to my friend and colleague, Representative [Mark] Pocan, for his work leading our Caucus and standing up to Republicans’ anti-equality attacks in the 118th Congress. I look forward to continuing this fight with him this Congress.”
Takano said, “In the 118th Congress, Republicans used their majority to attack the rights of the LGBTQ+ community instead of making any meaningful progress for the American people. I know that our community will have a strong defender against Republicans’ incoming attacks with Representative Takano as our Chair,” said Rep. Pocan (D-WI), outgoing Chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus. “I look forward to continuing to work with him — and every member of the Equality Caucus — in defending the rights of all Americans from Republican extremists in every branch of government.”
Founded in 2008 by then-U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) and now-senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), the first out queer member of the Senate who just won a bruising re-election campaign, the Equality Caucus has fought for LGBTQ+ rights, including the Equality Act and the Respect for Marriage Act.
Joe Biden honors two marriage equality icons
During a ceremony at the White House on Jan. 2, 2025, President Joe Biden awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal — the nation’s second-most prestigious civilian award — to two iconic gay figures in the long-fought battle for marriage equality.
Evan Wolfson, founder of Freedom to Marry, and Mary L. Bonauto, senior director of civil rights and legal strategies at GLBTQ Legal Advocates & Defenders (GLAD Law), were among 20 honorees receiving the award. Biden said of his honorees, “Together, you embody the central truth: We’re a great nation because we’re a good people. Our democracy begins and ends with the duties of citizenship. That’s our work for the ages, and it’s what all of you embody.”
The White House praised Wolfson for his strategic vision and tireless advocacy. “By leading the marriage equality movement, Evan Wolfson helped millions of people in all 50 states win the fundamental right to love, marry, and be themselves. For 32 years, starting with a visionary law school thesis, Evan Wolfson worked with singular focus and untiring optimism to change not just the law, but society — pioneering a political playbook for change and sharing its lessons, even now, with countless causes worldwide.”
A White House statement read, “Attorney and activist Mary Bonauto first fought to legalize same-sex marriage in Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Maine before arguing before the Supreme Court in Obergefell v. Hodges, which established marriage equality as the law of the land. Her efforts made millions of families whole and forged a more perfect Union.”
Wolfson said of the marriage equality movement he led for years, “This medal is a tribute to the transformative democratic work we all did together, and to the power of hope, strategy, determination and love.”
The 10th anniversary of the Obergefell decision in 2025 prompted Wolfson to add, “I’m honored to see the profoundly positive impact that the freedom to marry has had for so many families across the country, and for the LGBTQ community and American people as a whole.”
Bonauto said in a statement, “It is an astonishing honor to receive this recognition, and to be in the company of other incredible individuals who have had such a significant impact on the lives of Americans.”
She added, “The Presidential Citizens Medal represents something fundamental: that we each have a role to play in fulfilling our country’s promises of equality, dignity and freedom. I stand alongside so many courageous individuals who fought for the right to marry, and others across our nation who share a deep desire that all of our community members be treated with fairness and dignity. This recognition today is a testament to the profoundly positive impact marriage equality has had on individuals, families, and communities across our country.”