Gay Alexandria City Council member Kirk McPike emerged as the clearcut winner in a hastily called Jan. 20 “firehouse” Democratic primary for a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates representing Alexandria.

McPike, who was one of two gay candidates running in the four-candidate primary, received 1,279 votes or 60.5 percent, far ahead of gay public school teacher Gregory Darrall, a political newcomer who received 60 votes or 3 percent. 

Former Alexandria City School Board member Eileen Cassidy Rivera came in second place with 508 votes or 24 percent and Northern Virginia criminal law defense attorney Chris Leibig finished in third place with 265 votes or 12.5 percent.

Each of the candidates expressed strong support for LGBTQ-related issues.

With less than a week’s notice, Democratic Party officials in Alexandria called the primary to select a Democratic nominee to run in the Feb. 10 special election to fill the 5^th District House of Delegates seat being vacated by state Del. Elizabeth Bennett-Parker (D-Alexandria).

Bennett-Parker won the Democratic nomination for the Virginia State Senate seat being vacated by gay state Sen. Adam Ebbin (D-Alexandria), who is resigning from his seat to take a position in the administration of Democratic Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, who took office on Jan. 17.

 Bennett-Parker won the nomination for Ebbin’s state Senate seat in yet another firehouse primary on Jan. 13 in which she defeated three other candidates, including gay former state Del. Mark Levine.

 McPike, a longtime LGBTQ rights advocate, first won election to the Alexandria City Council in 2021. He has served for 13 years as chief of staff for gay U.S. Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) and has remained in that position during his tenure on the Alexandria Council. He told the Washington Blade he will continue as chief of staff until next month, when he will resign from that position before taking office in the House of Delegates.

He received the endorsement of Ebbin, U.S. Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), and the LGBTQ Victory Fund in his race for the 5^th District Va. House seat. Being an overwhelmingly Democratic district, virtually all political observers expect McPike to win the Feb. 10 special election. 

He will be running against Republican nominee Mason Butler, a local business executive who emerged as the only GOP candidate running for the delegate seat.

“Thank you to the voters of Alexandria for choosing me as the Democratic nominee in the House of Delegates District 5,” McPike said in a statement released shortly after the vote count was completed. “It is an incredible honor to have the opportunity to fight for our community and its values in Richmond,” he said.

“I look forward to continuing to work to address our housing crisis, the challenge of climate change, and the damaging impacts of the Trump administration on the immigrant families, LGBTQ+ Virginians, and federal employees who call Alexandria home,” he stated.

He praised Ebbin for his longstanding support for the LGBTQ community in the Virginia Legislature and added, “If elected to the House of Delegates in the Feb. 10 general election, I will continue to fight to protect the rights and freedoms of LGBTQ+ Virginians from my new position in Richmond.”

Gay candidate Darrall’s campaign website said he is a “proud progressive, lifelong educator, and labor leader running to put people first.” It says he is a political newcomer “with more than 20 years in the classroom” as a teacher who played a key role in the successful unionization of Fairfax Public Schools.

“He is a proud member and staunch supporter of the LGBTQIA+ community,” his website statement said.

Jessica Stern, the former special U.S. envoy for the promotion of LGBTQ and intersex rights, on the eve of the first anniversary of the Trump-Vance administration said its foreign policy has “hurt people” around the world.

“The changes that they are making will take a long time to overturn and recover from,” she said on Jan. 14 during a virtual press conference the Alliance for Diplomacy and Justice, a group she co-founded, co-organized.

Amnesty International USA National Director of Government Relations and Advocacy Amanda Klasing, Human Rights Watch Deputy Washington Director Nicole Widdersheim, Human Rights First President Uzra Zeya, PEN America’s Jonathan Friedman, and Center for Reproductive Rights Senior Federal Policy Council Liz McCaman Taylor also participated in the press conference.

The Trump-Vance administration took office on Jan. 20, 2025.

The White House proceeded to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, which funded LGBTQ and intersex rights organizations around the world.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio last March announced the State Department would administer the 17 percent of USAID contracts that had not been cancelled. Rubio issued a waiver that allowed PEPFAR and other “life-saving humanitarian assistance” programs to continue to operate during the U.S. foreign aid freeze the White House announced shortly after it took office.

The global LGBTQ and intersex rights movement has lost more than an estimated $50 million in funding because of the cuts. The Washington Blade has previously reported PEPFAR-funded programs in Kenya and other African countries have been forced to suspend services and even shut down.

Stern noted the State Department “has dismantled key parts of foreign policy infrastructure that enabled the United States to support democracy and human rights abroad” and its Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor “has effectively been dismantled.” She also pointed out her former position and others — the Special Representative for Racial Equity and Justice, the Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women’s Issues, and the Ambassador-at-Large for Global Criminal Justice — “have all been eliminated.”

President Donald Trump on Jan. 7 issued a memorandum that said the U.S. will withdraw from the U.N. Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women and more than 60 other U.N. and international entities.

Rubio in a Jan. 10 Substack post said UN Women failed “to define what a woman is.”

“At a time when we desperately need to support women — all women — this is yet another example of the weaponization of transgender people by the Trump administration,” said Stern.

US ‘conducting enforced disappearances’

The Jan. 14 press conference took place a week after a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent killed Renee Good, a 37-year-old woman who left behind her wife and three children, in Minneapolis. American forces on Jan. 3 seized now former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, at their home in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital, during an overnight operation. Trump also continues to insist the U.S. needs to gain control of Greenland.

Widdersheim during the press conference noted the Trump-Vance administration last March sent 252 Venezuelans to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, a maximum-security prison known by the Spanish acronym CECOT.

One of them, Andry Hernández Romero, is a gay asylum seeker who the White House claimed was a member of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang the Trump-Vance administration has designated as an “international terrorist organization.” Hernández upon his return to Venezuela last July said he suffered physical, sexual, and psychological abuse while at CECOT.

“In 2025 … the United States is conducting enforced disappearances,” said Widdersheim.

Zeya, who was Under Secretary of State for Civilian Security, Democracy, and Human Rights from 2021-2025, in response to the Blade’s question during the press conference said her group and other advocacy organizations have “got to keep doubling down in defense of the rule of law, to hold this administration to account.”

I understand my own geopolitical limits and don’t pretend to know how Europeans should respond to U.S. threats to seize Greenland or retaliate against anyone who opposes them. However, as I mentioned in March, it’s clear that for Europeans and LGBTQ+ people alike, hug-and-kiss diplomacy is over.

In practice, that means responding to the U.S. administration’s provocations with dialogue, human‑rights rhetoric, and reasoning may now be counterproductive. It looks weak. At some point, Europeans will have to draw a line and show how bullying allies and breaking international agreements carry a cost — and that the cost is unpredictable. On the surface, they have few options; like LGBTQ+ communities, they are very behind in raw power and took too long to wake up. But they still have leverage, and they can still inflict harm.​

Maybe it is time for them to call the bluff. America has a great deal to lose, not least its reputation and credibility on the world stage. Stephen Miller and Pete Hegseth, with all their bravado, obviously underestimate both the short‑ and long‑term geopolitical price of ridicule. Force the United States to contemplate sending troops into an ally’s territory, and let the consequences play out in international opinion, institutions, and markets.​

In the United States, LGBTQ+ communities have already endured a cascade of humiliations and live under constant threat of more. In 2025 our symbols and heroes were systematically erased or defaced: the USNS Harvey Milk was quietly renamed after a straight war hero, Admiral Rachel Levine’s title and image were scrubbed from official materials, Pride flags were banned from public buildings, World AIDS Day events were defunded or stripped of queer content, the Orlando memorial and other sites of mourning were targeted, the U.S. lead a campaign against LGBTQ+ language at the U.N., and rainbow crosswalks were literally ripped up or painted over. We cannot simply register our distress; we must articulate a response.​

In practice, that means being intentional and focused. We should select a few unmistakable examples: a company that visibly broke faith with us, a vulnerable political figure whose actions demand consequences, and an institution that depends on constituencies that still need us. The tools matter less than the concentration of force — boycotts, shaming, targeted campaigning all qualify — so long as crossing certain lines produces visible, memorable costs.​

A friend suggested we create what he called a “c***t committee.” I liked the discipline it implies: a deliberate, collective decision to carefully select a few targets and follow through. We need a win badly in 2026.

These thoughts are part of a broader reflection on the character of our movement I’d like to explore in the coming months. My friends know that anger and sarcasm carried me for a long time, but eventually delivered diminishing returns. I am incrementally changing these aspects of my character that stand in the way of my goals. The movement is in a similar place: the tactics that served us best are losing effectiveness because the terrain has shifted. The Greenland moment clarifies that we must have a two-pronged approach: building long-term power and, in the short term, punching a few people in the nose.

Fabrice Houdart published this column on his weekly Substack newsletter. The Washington Blade has republished it with his permission.