Every year in Pennsylvania, LGBTQ rights are on the ballot twice: in primaries and general elections that decide what our government looks like, who it fights for, and whether it works at all. In less than 40 days, we have critical federal and state elections, and we have to show up again.
In 2024, our community turned out in record numbers and backed Democrats. Too many other voters got played by misinformation and fear, and handed Republicans power anyway. We’ve been under attack ever since, and the cruelty is costing queer lives.
This administration has gone all in on trans fearmongering, rolling back our ability to exist openly in public life, and pressuring private companies to abandon us too. They banned us from the military. They stripped the LGBTQ option from the suicide prevention hotline. They’re cutting off HIV prevention and gender-affirming care. They’re pushing a version of masculinity that treats anyone who doesn’t subscribe to it as fair game for discrimination. Trans people are where they started, not where they’ll stop. Every attack tests how far they can go before we push back. It’s time we did and can on November 3rd.
And here’s the good news: we have a real shot at winning if we all turn out! Congressional Democrats have held the line and kept anti-LGBTQ bills from becoming federal law this session, but reversing the executive orders and agency rules already causing harm requires taking back Congress.
Voter registration deadline is October 19, 2026
Here in Pennsylvania, the opportunity is even bigger! If we elect Democrats up and down the ballot, Governor Shapiro finally gets a legislature that will send him the Fairness Act instead of letting it die in the Republican Senate again. It’s passed the Democratic House twice now, but the GOP Senate has refused to even vote on it.
The same is true for a stack of bills Republicans have blocked for years:
- Codifying same-sex marriage into state law, so it doesn’t depend on a Supreme Court that keeps threatening to revisit it
- Closing the hate crimes gap, so attacks based on who we are or who we love are finally prosecuted as what they are
- Reforming the legal name change process
- Banning the “gay panic” defense in violence against us
- Decriminalizing HIV status
- Protecting bodily autonomy in state law
Every one of these has already passed the State House. Every one is sitting in a Republican Senate that would rather run culture-war bills than lower your grocery bill, fix your commute, or do literally anything about the cost of living.
Flipping the state Senate is not a long shot. Republicans hold it by the narrowest margin in over a decade, and a handful of races will decide it. Every vote in those districts matters more than usual this year.
So vote. Not because it’s easy, not because the system has earned it, but because our lives are on the line and so is every gain the people before us fought for. Show up on November 3rd and bring someone with you to vote for Democrats so we can get what we’re owed.