Jordan Dashow, the chief director of the Congressional Equality Caucus, is one thing of a jack of all trades.
“I like to think my job is to make our members’ job as easy as possible when it comes to supporting LGBTQI equality,” he stated in an interview.
9 brazenly LGBTQ members of the Home assist lead the 190-member Equality Caucus — one of many largest within the Home — on its mission to advertise LGBTQ equality in Congress.
Coordinating with practically each Home Democratic workplace could make Dashow’s days chaotic — and his a number of cell telephones mandatory — however he wouldn’t have it some other manner.
“What makes this job easy in that regard is that they’re all here for the right reasons,” Dashow, 32, stated of the caucus’s members. “Like, we’re talking about equality. Our opponents try to make it this tricky, complex issue, but at the end of the day, it’s an easy one.”
Previous to becoming a member of the Equality Caucus in 2022, Dashow spent a number of years as a staffer for the Home Judiciary Committee underneath then-Chair Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), a longtime advocate for LGBTQ rights and the primary particular person to say the phrase “transgender” on the Home flooring in 1998. Dashow labored carefully with Nadler on the profitable committee consideration of the Equality Act in 2019 and 2021.
The next yr, Dashow and the Equality Caucus helped drum up assist for the Respect for Marriage Act, laws to codify same-sex and interracial marriage rights that Nadler first launched in 2009. President Biden signed the invoice in December 2022.
“It really was just such an honor to play a role in helping move that bill through the House — not once, but twice — and to the president’s desk,” Dashow stated.
The caucus’s work is much from over, and its members, guided by Dashow, have huge plans for the following Congress.
“So much of the progress we’ve made as a community is because people have heard our stories,” Dashow stated. “They’ve met us. They realize that queer folks are their neighbors, their children, their cousins and their colleagues.”
“Hopefully, if we have a pro-equality majority next Congress, we can return to pushing a proactive pro-LGBTQI legislative agenda through the House,” he stated.
