As of March 2021,[update] 26 members of the LGBT community are known to have held office in the U.S. Congress. In the House, 25 LGBT people held office; in the Senate, 3 held office. Two people, Tammy Baldwin and Kyrsten Sinema, served in the House and were later elected into the Senate. The earliest known LGBT congressperson was Stewart McKinney, who began his term in the House in 1971. The earliest known LGBT senator is Harris Wofford, who began his term in 1991. Both men were not out during their tenure: McKinney's bisexuality was revealed after his death and Wofford announced his plans to marry a man over 20 years after serving in the Senate. Sabrina Sojourner served as the Shadow Representative for the District of Columbia for the 1997 to 1999 term, though she did not have floor privileges.[1][2]
There are currently[update] 11 openly LGBT members of the 117th Congress, all of whom are Democrats. Two are senators and the rest are House representatives. This constitutes the most LGBT congresspeople serving at the same time in U.S. history.[3][4]
Senate
All senators listed served as open members of the LGBT community unless otherwise specified:
^Wofford announced his marriage to a man in 2016, which makes him the earliest known LGBT senator.[5][6]
^As an openly lesbian woman, Baldwin is the first openly LGBT senator.[3][7][8]
^Sinema is the first openly bisexual senator.[3][9]
^Koch denied he was gay throughout his life, but his sexuality was confirmed in a 2022 article in The New York Times.[10]
^After dying in office of AIDS, McKinney was outed as bisexual in his obituary, making him the earliest known LGBT member of Congress.[6][11][12][13][14][15]
^Jordan's domestic partnership with Nancy Earl was revealed in her obituary in 1996, making her the first LGBT woman in Congress (per the U.S. National Archives).[16][17]
^As an openly gay man, Pocan is the first LGBT member of Congress to replace another LGBT member of Congress (Tammy Baldwin) and the first non-incumbent in a same-sex marriage elected to Congress.[3][6][8][36]
^Sinema is the first openly bisexual member of Congress.[6][8][37]
^Jones is the first openly gay African-American elected to Congress (along with Ritchie Torres).[3][42]
^Torres is the first openly gay African-American elected to Congress (along with Mondaire Jones)[42] and the first openly gay Latino member of Congress.[3]
^Wofford, Harris (April 23, 2016). "Finding love again, this time with a man". New York Times. Retrieved May 7, 2016. Too often, our society seeks to label people by pinning them on the wall – straight, gay or in between. I don't categorize myself based on the gender of those I love. I had a half-century of marriage with a wonderful woman, and now am lucky for a second time to have found happiness.