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Williamson’s murder underscores the need for Virginia and the nation to recognize gender identity and sexual orientation as hate crime categories and oppose legislation and policies targeting transgender individuals and those that delegitimize and erase the transgender experience.

LGBT+ Democrats of Virginia, the official LGBT+ caucus of the Democratic Party of Virginia, added nine June 20th Democratic projected primary winners to their 2023 endorsements. These candidates were previously endorsed by the caucus in a prior general election.

The endorsement questionnaire for LGBT+ Democrats of Virginia now includes questions about ensuring equal access to public services, preserving free speech and expression, prohibiting bans on LGBT+ military service, protecting transgender students in public schools, ensuring access to gender-affirming health care, and more issues important to the LGBT+ community that have been subjects of recent legislation. The last update to the questionnaire was in 2021.

Of note, Maggie Sacra, the caucus chairperson for over a decade, opted not to run for re-election to this office. Instead, she will remain on the board as the Immediate Past Chairperson and also serve as Assistant Treasurer. Longtime board member Joel McDonald, who has served as Vice Chair for Technology and Communications and the Vice Chair for Technology, will serve as Chairperson.

When I sat down a few days ago to write this letter, I looked at letters from the past. I read through them thinking how different our 2022 was from our 2019, 2020, and 2021. So many things have changed in our lives over the past few years. Now that things are getting back to ‘normal’, we have almost completely gotten back to our previous activities. Hopefully, by next year we will be back to pre-pandemic schedules and events!