What Election Results Reveal About LGBTQ+ Winners and Voters

In what’s being called the rainbow wave, dozens of LGBTQ+ candidates captured historic wins in the 2020 U.S. elections, including the election of the first openly transgender person for a State Senate seat and the first gay and Afro-Latino and Black men elected to Congress.

William Robert is the director of LGBTQ Studies and an associate professor of religion at Syracuse University’s College of Arts and Sciences.

Prof. Robert says:

“I’m almost always thrilled when LGBTQ+ candidates win political offices.  I say ‘almost’ because our identities are intersections. They’re never reducible to one category, like gender or sexuality.

“I know that many LGBTQ+ persons voted for Donald Trump and Mike Pence, whose records on LGBTQ+ issues are deplorable. That demonstrates that LGBTQ+ citizens aren’t a bloc of one-issue voters. They seem not to be a bloc at all, given how little national media attention they receive.

“What’s most exciting to me are how many LGBTQ+ persons of color won in yesterday’s elections and how their victories range from local to national positions. If the old saying is right, that ‘all politics are local,’ that gives me hope that LGBTQ+ persons can effect urgently needed sociopolitical change regardless of who’s president.”

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