LGBTQ people are vastly underrepresented in elected office. Here’s how that could change

If we want to win equality, we need to vote – and run for office ourselves.

Blaizen Bloom
Photo: Screenshot

LGBTQ candidates are on the ballot November 8 in record numbers—and they’re younger and more racially and gender diverse than ever, fighting back at the local level against a wave of repressive legislation and helping to turn out the vote for Democrats.

Blaizen Bloom, 19, was inspired to run for office partly because of the surge of anti-queer legislation and rhetoric rising across the country. Laws rolling back trans students’ rights were passed in 2020 and 2021 in Bloom’s state of Virginia (and an even more restrictive one is proposed for 2022).

Bloom was a high school student in Chesapeake Public Schools in those years and grew disenchanted with the handling of the pandemic, mental health, and LGBTQ students.

“Certain people running in this race have pushed to get Gender Queer [by Maia Kobabe] taken out of our school libraries and I’ve received emails that ask, ‘Should the LGBTQ agenda be exposed to K-3 students?’” Bloom recounts to LGBTQ Nation. “It’s certainly worrisome that we could pretty much have a school board that’s going to be acting on these kinds of impulses that we’ve seen across the country and bringing them to the Chesapeake.”

Now a college student, Bloom is one of at least…

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