![]() ![]() Though she hadn’t yet come out, Roem said she sought to understand what legal mechanisms existed to protect people like her – and more importantly – how to fight for them.Īcross the country today, many states permit a legal strategy known as the gay and trans “panic” defense, which can allow people who are charged with violent crimes against LGBTQ victims to argue that it was the victim’s gender identity or sexual orientation that drove them to violence.Įarlier this year, at the behest of a teenage constituent who told her it was scary growing up knowing that someone could get away with harming them, Roem introduced a bill to ban the gay and trans panic defense for murder or manslaughter in Virginia. “I would read those every single day, and then I would go online and I would read about politics, two hours a day, seven days a week, every day for years.” “I would read the newspaper, I would read USA Today, New York Times,” she says. Bush wanted to limit marriage to heterosexuals. ![]() She first got invested in politics in 2003, when then-President George W. “What person is going to be more qualified to represent their community than a lifelong resident of that community who spent their career actually covering the public policy issues of the community?’” Jahi Chikwendiu/The Washington Post/Getty Imagesīefore her run for office in 2017, Roem spent nine years as a journalist in her community, which she says was her chief qualification for elected office. Roem falls to her knees after getting a call from Joe Biden congratulating her for her 2017 victory at an election watch party in Gainesville, Virginia. But because there are fewer of us, it makes it a harder conversation.” “If you know a trans person, you’re much more likely to support our civil rights. Given that 0.6% of Americans identify as transgender, according to a Gallup poll on LGBT identification published earlier this year, she recognizes that for some people, she may be the only trans person they know. “What we learned from the marriage equality fights,” she explained, is that “if you know a gay person in your life and you see just that person, just being a person, that you (are) far less likely to want to restrict their civil rights.” She is well aware that her visibility and representation are changing the national conversation. Though Roem is a state legislator, her history-making moment means her platform is national. “When I was asked on election night, ‘Hey, what does this mean?’ It was just like, well, it means that a trans woman is going to finally work on fixing Route 28.” She says her success is built on deep knowledge of local issues since she grew up in the Manassas area she now represents. Roem jokes that there are still more things named after Confederate general Stonewall Jackson in her county than there are Starbucks locations. ![]() Roem represents Virginia’s 13th District in the House of Delegates – an area near the home of the first major battle of the Civil War. People know exactly who I am here.”Īnd during this Pride Month, Roem has a message to the younger people in the LGBTQ community who say they don’t like politics: “When you are an LGBTQ person, you have to care.” “I never say ‘trans but,’ always ‘trans and.’ Because it’s like, no, I don’t hide who I am. “They were willing to look at me and they go, ‘Yeah, we know she’s trans and she’ll do a great job,’” Roem said of her constituents in an interview with CNN earlier this month. It’s not a well populated trail, but one she is proud to have blazed. She will always be the first, but four years later, she is no longer the only person in the US who identifies as transgender to be elected and serve in a state legislative body. It was 2017 and she had just become the first state lawmaker who identifies as transgender elected in Virginia. ![]() It was a moment captured for the history books.ĭanica Roem, on her knees with her face in her hands, crying. ![]()
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