On June 13, Danica Roem turned into the first openly transgender major party candidate for the Virginia House of Delegates, and she will be facing off against 13-term incumbent and social conservative Bob Marshall for a seat in the state’s General Assembly.
Roem is a journalist who worked for the Gainsville Times and the Prince William Times, and is a seven-time Virgina Press Association award winner. She has been a part of the metal band Cab Ride Home for many years, considering the genre as a huge part of her life and something that defines her. She is a stepmother to a child enrolled in a public school. Is there anything she can not do?
Her opponent, Delegate Marshall, is 73 years old and has a long history of fighting against LGBTQ+ rights. He introduced HB 1612 or Physical Privacy Act, which would have made transgender citizens use restrooms of their sex assigned at birth, and not the ones of the gender they identify with, but was fortunately rejected by his own party; and also authored the state’s constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. In a statement given after her victory, “Bigot Bob” — as he is called by many, tried to erase her identity by using male pronouns to talk about her ideals. And his non-progressive comments do not stop there.
“And you wonder why you’re not getting anything past? Oh, right, because you’re focusing on divisible, exclusionary, discriminatory social issues that the governor has already told you he will veto,” She said to Noisey. “We should be more inclusive, and it shouldn’t matter what you look like, where you come from, how you worship, or who you love— we should be saying, ‘Welcome to Virginia.'”
Roem’s supporters, which gave her the nomination with a 44.7% of the vote, are not only appreciative of her zero-discrimination policies and her views, but also of fixing and doing something about the high traffic in Route 28; raising the minimum wage; improving public schools; and helping grow the region’s economy.
Here is to hoping she wins this election on November 7 and turns into the third transgender state legislator in the U.S., and one of the few in the world. We will be rooting for her, and if you want to show her support you can do it in social media accounts such as Twitter and Facebook, or financially in her website.
I’m not waiting to bring the fight to Del. Bob Marshall (R) for his discriminatory social bills. We’re fighting back now. #NoH8 #FixRoute28 pic.twitter.com/t1VQSP8l3y
— Danica Roem (@pwcdanica) 18 de mayo de 2017
