As Pride Month comes to a close, Virginia’s 2025 election cycle stands out: the Commonwealth has its first openly gay candidate to run for a statewide office.
But members of the state legislature's LGBTQ+ Caucus question if he's got the community's best interests in mind.
Celebrating Pride in 2025, with President Donald Trump using the Department of Justice to attack school districts that support LGBTQ students, hasn’t been easy for Delegate Rozia Henson.
“There are days where you’re frustrated with what’s happening in D.C. and Congress," Henson told Radio IQ Monday. "But it reignites the fire of why it's important to elect people who are willing to fight for you.”
Henson is Vice Chair of Virginia’s LGBTQ+ Legislative Caucus and the first openly gay Black member of the state legislature.
“We know pride started off as protest, Stonewall and the fight for rights," he added. "It’s now evolved into a celebration, but we’re still fighting.”
There’s another first in this year’s election: former radio talk show host John Reid. He's the first openly gay candidate to run for a statewide office in the Commonwealth.
Reid won the lieutenant governor nomination after another Republican dropped out of the race, but Governor Glenn Youngkin asked him to step down over alleged links to a sexually explicit social media account. Reid denied the account was his and stayed in the race.
Some of the Virginia GOP's core constituents have been hesitant to support the nominee over the issue. And the top of the 2025 ticket, current Lieutenant Governor and gubernatorial hopeful Winsome Earle-Sears has yet to publicly embrace the candidate, though that could change at their first scheduled "unity rally" scheduled for Tuesday in Northern Virginia.
Despite Reid originally blaming Youngkin's request on the candidate's sexuality, the Republican lieutenant governor candidate doesn’t think his sexuality should be a campaign issue.
“I think everyone is focused on economic issues, housing issues, stopping the social justice issues that have thrown our society in disarray and jeopardized our future for young people in schools,” Reid told Radio IQ.
But Henson, a Virginia legislative staffer before entering office, said he saw the Virginia GOP vote against protections for people like him for years.
"When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time," Henson said, quoting Maya Angelou. He pointed to Earle-Sears' handwritten notes saying she was "morally opposed," to the Democrat-led effort to roll back Virginia's 2006 ban on same-sex marriage and replace it with protections for such unions.
Reid has said he opposes the amendment, and he fears the new amendment would open people of faith to legal liability.
Senate Democrats have stressed religious freedom protections already exist; Virginia's first openly gay elected official and the new amendment's author, Senator Adam Ebbin, suggested to the Virginia Scope, "If people don’t like same sex marriage, then they shouldn’t marry someone of the same gender.”
Reid's comment about schools comes amidst efforts by Virginia Republicans — and Trump — to roll back protections for transgender kids in the state’s public schools and beyond.
"I refuse to stand by while reckless policies and incompetent leadership cause emotional and mental harm to our kids anywhere in our Commonwealth," Reid said ahead of a rally to support what he called "yet another disturbing example of how Loudoun County Public Schools has turned children into political pawns."
Virginia is also the home of the nation’s first transgender legislator, Senator Danica Roem. The chair of the LGBTQ+ Caucus and in office since 2018, Roem said her gender identity has been an unsuccessful point of political attack ever since.
"They've done this four times; run transphobic candidates against me during the election, and I've won four times," Roem told Radio IQ.
She thinks that means Virginians are less worried about transgender issues than Republicans argue. But she said voters have the chance to voice their opinion in the fall.
“In politics in Virginia, if you don’t like the outcome of what just happened last year nationwide, then go do something about it in Virginia this year,” she said.
And Henson said, as long as Democrats have the power to do so, they'll protect trans kids.
"We’re trying to educate every single child in the Commonwealth of Virginia," he said. "I don’t know what those Republicans are doing.”
Early voting in Virginia starts in September.
This report, provided by Virginia Public Radio, was made possible with support from the Virginia Education Association.
