against that.

The anniversary was also bittersweet, occurring at a time when LGBTQ rights and equality are under assault by the present administration. It reminded us that 50 years of struggle was far from over, even if—as the Stonewall 50 celebrations also vividly showed—we live in a time of increasing confidence, openness, acceptance, and varied self-definition.

In Pete Buttigieg, whatever you think of him, there is the bald fact of a gay man running for president, and the important moment in history that marks. Danica Roem made history first in 2017 by becoming the first-ever out transgender state legislator, when she was elected to represent the 13th District in the Virginia House of Delegates. This year, Roem made history again as the first out trans person to be re-elected tocan, through legislation and the courts, to stall and reverse the gains made on the road to LGBTQ equality.

Although it feels like another time, the decade began with continued agonizing over Proposition 8, which was passed in California in 2008 and which overturned that state’s ruling the previous May that had legalized gay marriage. (Marriage equality eventually became law in California in 2013.)

The decade also began with the headline-generating suicide of Rutgers student Tyler Clementi in September 2010, whose mother Jane described to me in 2017 what the effect of his death had been on her family, as well as the many issues it raised around bullying, privacy, mental health, and coming out.

An awful, larger-scale tragedy erupted when 49 people were killed and 53 injured when a gunman