Talk:List of first openly LGBT politicians in the United States

Frances Perkins
In what way was Frances Perkins “openly LGBT”? Sajita (talk) 17:38, 26 June 2021 (UTC)

Heading footnote
I don't think we need that footnote in the heading for State Legislators. It really should be a paragraph right underneath the heading. It is OK to have sentences underneath headings to explain the listing. That does not defeat the purpose of a list. As it stands now, someone wanting to wikilink directly to the subheading needs to type ...#State legislators.5B4.5D which would be incorrect if other footnotes are placed in the list before this subheading. All they should need to type is ...#State_legislators -- JoannaSerah (talk) 18:54, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Ordering of State Legislators
I know this is a list of firsts, but putting state legislators in this order just looks like a mess. Most people, I believe, would be looking for state lists to be in alphabetical order. If we insist on chronological order, then there needs to be a sentence or something explaining how to read the list (Underneath the subheading, not in a footnote). Otherwise we will have others change this too. The footnote doesn't even say that the whole list is in chrono order, just that "the first out person to serve in each of those states is listed here." That could be true even of an alpha sort. As a guide, see List of the first LGBT holders of political offices which has a link to this list. This separates countries and even states (if you look at Australia) in alpha order. Putting the US states in alpha order would be much more readable, more uniform with other lists and can be searched more easily by the regular user. We can put a sentence in that says that Massachusetts was the first state with an out elected state representative, if deemed necessary. I really think the states themselves should be listed alphabetically. -- JoannaSerah (talk) 18:54, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

List questions
I just reverted part of a recent edit about records. They don't belong in an article about first office holders. It would amount to a tally sheet as new records came in. Also, it appeared to be original research. I left the addition of Rep. Micah Kellner in, but have some doubts as to inclusion. Why was this included? I think originally, as far as the state legislatures go, the list was for the first officeholders of either chamber, not specifically the first of each individual chamber. This relates also to some recent inclusions of Mark Ferrandino, Pat Steadman and Lucía Guzmán. I don't think Steadman or Guzmán need to be in the list as they weren't the first in the legislature as a whole. Veiga should stay for first in the state leg. and Ferrandino should stay for first male in the state leg. There might be others like this, I only went back so far in the edit history. Thank you.-- JoannaSerah (talk) 18:28, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
 * Agreed. This list is getting out of control, particularly with the addition of local offices but also with several legislators per state. I propose an alphabetical table of state legislators, one from each state, with readers able to click on the column headings if they want a list by year. Let's limit it to the first state legislator in each state, without all the "sub-firsts" (first man, first woman, first senator, first rep, first non-incumbent, etc.). Thoughts? --Lincolnite (talk) 20:58, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
 * I think there are certainly a lot of problems with this list as currently formatted, but the idea of allowing entries for the first male and first female elected to a state legislature doesn't really strike me as one of them. (That said, it's probably true that we don't need to record the first male and first female representatives and the first male and first female senators; the first male and first female elected to the legislature at all should probably suffice.) The order should indeed be by state rather than by year, however.
 * There's also an extreme inconsistency as to how names are formatted: sometimes the honorific Rep. or Sen. is listed outside the wikibrackets so that the name appears as "Rep. Tammy Baldwin", and other times it's piped into the wikilinks as Rep. Tammy Baldwin instead -- yet for federal officeholders the list doesn't include the honorific at all, relying on a link to the relevant political body instead of the honorific title for context.
 * For local officeholders, while it's true in principle that "first LGBT holder of a city council seat" is considered by WP:POLITICIAN to be a potentially valid claim of notability, I also think we need to be realistic about it: given how much work Wikipedia has to do that ranks as a much higher priority than putting concerted effort into articles about every last LGBT city or town councillor in the United States, a considerable number of the local politicians listed aren't likely to ever actually get their own articles whether they would theoretically qualify for them or not. And a considerable number of those entries aren't sourced at all, either. So for local politicians, I would suggest that (a) the list should be trimmed back to include only those people who can actually be sourced properly, and (b) instead of leaving every entry in the list as a long-term (and potentially permanent) redlink, we should wikilink only the figures who actually have articles to link to, while allowing other properly sourced entries to stand as unlinked names. They can always be wikilinked again at a later date, if and when somebody actually gets around to writing an article about them -- but in the meantime, the excess of redlinks just makes this article look messy. Bearcat (talk) 16:19, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

Politicians that came out after retiring from office?
Should the "By state delegation" section of this article include politicians that came out after retiring from office? Some examples include: X n  u  x 16:28, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
 * California
 * Rep. Michael Huffington - served 1993–1995, came out 1998
 * Maryland
 * Rep. Robert Bauman - served 1973–1981, published autobiography entitled The Gentleman from Maryland: The Conscience of a Gay Conservative in 1986
 * Mississippi
 * Rep. Jon Hinson - served 1979–1981, came out sometime after losing reelection

This NY State Legislator should be included, even if not the "first."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brad_Hoylman Willfilm123 (talk) 07:10, 12 June 2016 (UTC)
 * If he wasn't the first, then what's the basis for including him in a list of firsts? This is not meant to be a list of every LGBT politician who's served in the United States; it's meant to list people who were the first LGBT holders of their offices and nobody else. Bearcat (talk) 00:03, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

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1st County Board Chair was Jay Fisette in 2001
Listed here is the 1st County Board President, Cathy Woolard in Georgia in 2002. However, the 1st County Board Chair was Jay Fisette in Arlington VA in 2001. These positions are equivalent. The major difference is that the President is directly elected. Shouldn't Jay Fisette be counted as the first County Board President/Chair, rather than Cathy Woolard? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Linafpinto1 (talk • contribs) 18:36, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

2018 update
Am in the middle of 20 gazillion things right now or I would do the update myself, but this article needs updating for 2018 in light of Colorado electing the nation's first openly gay governor on Tuesday. Lawikitejana (talk) 16:21, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
 * It's mentioned in the details. I'm assuming it isn't the lead yet because he hasn't held the office yet. Largoplazo (talk) 17:14, 8 November 2018 (UTC)

References!!
SO MANY of these lack references. This needs fixing ASAP for BLP. DemonDays64 (talk) 09:55, 21 December 2020 (UTC)
 * I deleted a bunch of them, but there are still more. Per WP:BLP and WP:OR, there should be no entries on these lists that doesn't either have a citation or a bluelink to an article for the person (which should then include a valid citation). Platonk (talk) 00:15, 13 November 2021 (UTC)

Is this a list of FIRSTs or not
Is this a list of FIRSTs or not? The section "State legislators", in particular, have a lot of multiple entries. Needs trimming to "just firsts". Platonk (talk) 22:21, 24 December 2021 (UTC)

Content forks
The two articles List of first openly LGBT politicians in the United States and List of LGBT politicians in the United States have become contents forks of each other. Non-firsts have been creeping into the FIRSTS article, and the plain 'list of' article is woefully deficient in list entries compared to the FIRSTS article. The latter article, using tables (which is prettier and vastly more interesting for a reader to view) would quickly become unwieldy in size should it even attempt to include all the "firsts" in it.

Either the articles need to be merged, or drop one of them, or they need to be separated further — perhaps into one FIRSTS article and the other as people in CURRENT office positions (not to include past office holders). Platonk (talk) 22:23, 24 December 2021 (UTC)