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We have every expectation that we will, as a party, nominate a candidate every bit as committed to LGBTQ+ equality as President Biden has been. We stand ready to endorse and work to elect that nominee, to re-elect Senator Tim Kaine, and to elect pro-quality Democrats to Congress and offices at all levels throughout the Commonwealth.

We are now creating the Don Davenport Memorial Outreach Fund to raise funds to support the outreach work that Don lived while serving our LGBT+ and Democratic communities. We currently have a matching donation promised by several of our Board members and their spouses, so that the donations you make to the fund during June will be multiplied with a double match. These funds will help us do outreach work so we can make sure that Virginia becomes increasingly BLUE and we continue to elect great Democrats to Congress and the White House for years to come. Please give today.

Virginia Democrats lost a fixture in the Party with the passing of Cragg Hines on December 16th, 2023. Hines was a longtime supporter of LGBT+ Democrats of Virginia as an early caucus member. He was also a member of Virginia Partisans, the predecessor to the caucus, helping to raise funds to support LGBT+ and pro-LGBT+ candidates for elected office in Virginia. In addition to his Democratic activism, Cragg Hines had a storied and award-winning career as a journalist. He was a correspondent, bureau chief, and columnist for the Houston Chronicle.

We cannot tacitly endorse the ideology at the helm of Twitter/X as the platform becomes less safe for the LGBT+ community. After over 12 years and over 800 posts, it’s time for us to leave. Fortunately, many other ways exist to stay connected with LGBT+ Democrats of Virginia.

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!