Raffi Freedman-Gurspan became the first out transgender White House staffer in 2015 when President Obama named her Outreach and Recruitment Director in the Presidential Personnel Office. She went on to serve as the White House LGBT Liaison, the first transgender person to hold the position. In 2017, Obama appointed Freedman-Gurspan a five-year term on the Board of Trustees of the United State Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC.
Having broken barriers as conservative-leaning Utah’s first out LGBTQ+ elected official, seven-term former legislator Jackie Biskupski kicked off her bid to unseat the two-term incumbent mayor of Salt Lake City in January 2015. Biskupski built a wide coalition of support, while remaining the progressive favorite in the race. Her identity was well known, as she was an outspoken LGBTQ+ activist who was originally spurred to run for the state House after it passed an anti-LGBTQ+ “no promo homo” law.
Winning the primary and general elections, Mayor Biskupski took office on January 4, 2016. She served one term, bowing out of a 2019 re-election campaign to spend more time with her family.
Just days before the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling that guaranteed same-sex couples the right to marry, Pete Buttigieg – the young mayor of South Bend, Indiana – penned an op-ed to his constituents in the South Bend Tribune explaining why the pending ruling was personal.
“Like most people, I would like to get married one day and eventually raise a family. I hope that when my children are old enough to understand politics, they will be puzzled that someone like me revealing he is gay was ever considered to be newsworthy.”
Buttigieg – who was first elected mayor in 2011 – described his struggle with coming to terms with his identity and his subsequent struggle to broadcast it publicly.
I was well into adulthood before I was prepared to acknowledge the simple fact that I am gay. It took years of struggle and growth for me to recognize that it’s just a fact of life, like having brown hair, and part of who I am. Putting something this personal on the pages of a newspaper does not come easy. We Midwesterners are instinctively private to begin with, and I’m not used to viewing this as anyone else’s business.
Buttigieg was overwhelmingly re-elected in November 2015, becoming the first out LGBTQ+ person elected mayor in Indiana.
When a presidential candidate in April 2019, Buttigieg spoke about his decision to come out at LGBTQ+ Victory Fund’s National Champagne Brunch in Washington, DC:
In the 2015 elections, out candidates Nancy VanReece and Brett Withers both won seats on the 40-member Nashville-Davidson Metro Council as Democrats in a year when local politics were taking a left turn. No out LGBTQ+ person had served on the Council since 2009, and 2015 marked the first time two out councilmembers served together. In later years, more LGBTQ+ members joined their ranks, and in 2019, Nashville’s out councilmembers formed the Council’s official LGBTQ+ Caucus, under the leadership of VanReece.
Well known for her work helping pass marriage equality in the District of Columbia, her extensive media appearances and her intersectional research at Center for American Progress, Aisha C. Mills was selected as the first woman and the first permanent Black executive of LGBTQ+ Victory Fund and LGBTQ+ Victory Institute. Mills was the first Black woman to ever lead a national LGBTQ+ organization.
During her tenure, she oversaw the implementation of a strategic plan that placed LGBTQ+ Victory Fund and LGBTQ+ Victory Institute at the forefront of the fight for LGBTQ+ rights on the state level in all 50 states and emphasized building the pipeline of trans leaders and LGBTQ+ people of color running for office.
During Mills’ leadership, America elected its first out governor – Oregon’s Kate Brown – as well as the first out transgender state lawmaker, Danica Roem of Virginia.
