In my 2008 introduction to Out and Elected in the USA, I opened with the following:

“Not so long ago it seemed improbable if not impossible that two words might exist side by side in the same sentence: ‘out’ and ‘elected.’ It was this striking juxtaposition that captured my imagination and curiosity and inspired 'Out and Elected in the USA.' A statement I ran across in the course of assembling this project captures the significance of the accomplishment of these individuals: ‘A critical marker of a maligned class of people’s arrival in a democratic society is the ascendance of its members to public office.’”

I think it is fair to say that now, in 2026, eighteen years later, it is relatively routine and mostly unremarkable for someone to be openly gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or non-binary and elected to public office in the United States. A 2024 report, Out on the Trail, by the Victory Fund, an organization dedicated to “increasing the number of out LGBTQ+ elected officials to all levels of government” states that there was more diversity among LGBTQ+ candidates and a 14.1% increase in LGBTQ+ candidates on ballots since 2020. The report notes that there were 1,017 known LGBTQ+ candidates for public office in the 2024 election cycle. At least 495 won their races.

The 2008 introduction continued:

“In November 1974, something extraordinary happened. Openly lesbian Elaine Noble made international news when she arrived at the Massachusetts state legislature. Kathy Kozachenko had in fact become the first openly gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender person to be elected to public office in the United States in January of that year, when she was elected to the City Council in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It was a rather muted and largely unnoticed event compared with Noble's victory. Noble had endured death threats, bullets through the windows of her campaign headquarters, intimidation of her campaign staff, and ugly hostility from her new colleagues in the State House. But Kozachenko's comparatively quiet accomplishment in community politics and Noble's high-profile ascension to state office turned a page in America's political history.

“Since then, many more openly lesbian, gay, and bisexual, and a few transgender Americans have been elected to serve at nearly every level of local, state, and national public office. Their numbers are a small percentage of the approximately 500,000 elected officials in the United States. But their visibility and impact on policies about, and perceptions of, LGBT people, while simultaneously focusing on the issues of primary concern to their constituents, has been transformative.

“The collection does not attempt to serve as a comprehensive catalog of everyone who ever was elected while being out of the closet during the time frame covered. And it includes no one who serves, or has served, while remaining in the closet. The aim was to capture a broad and diverse cross-section of the first thirty years of the courageous and community-minded people who have been, and in many cases still are, part of this recent and inspiring history, and to convey that history through their images and personal stories.”

For historical context, all photographs in the collection, with one exception, were taken from May 1998 to May 2001. The photograph of Gail Shibley, appointed to the Oregon State House in 1991 and elected in 1992, was taken in June 1991, several years before I began work on “Out and Elected.” The only photograph in the collection that I did not take is that of Kathy Kozachenko, which is credited to the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan.

The project was entirely self-funded, with an assist from the national PFLAG office. I used work-related travel for PFLAG as a field coordinator and personal vacation time to set up meetings with the subjects and photograph them, as much as possible at home, at work, and in their communities. I also conducted all the interviews and did all the photographic darkroom work.

My thanks to Marc Stein, OutHistory’s Executive Director, for his editorial eye with my 2026 updates, and to OutHistory for providing this platform for my work.

For information on a touring exhibit version of the collection, contact Ron Schlittler at rlschlittler@verizon.net.