Nancy Wechsler is an activist, writer, and former member of the Ann Arbor City Council, where she came out as a lesbian while serving her term. Elected to the City Council alongside fellow Human Rights Party candidate

Jerry DeGrieck Gerald (Jerry) C. DeGrieck is a public health manager and policy advisor in Seattle, Washington. He and Nancy Wechsler served together on the Ann Arbor City Council, 1972–1974, while they were graduate students at the University of Michigan. I ...

, both Wechsler and DeGrieck

came out Coming out of the closet, often shortened to coming out, is a metaphor used to describe LGBT people's self-disclosure of their sexual orientation, romantic orientation, or gender identity. Framed and debated as a privacy issue, coming out of ...

while serving, and are typically cited as the first openly LGBT elected officials in the United States.

Ann Arbor City Council

Wechsler and

were elected to the Ann Arbor City Council as members of the Human Rights Party on April 3, 1972. Political observers did not believe the third party had much chance of winning any seats, but the party's liberal platform appealed to young voters and beat university professors running as Democrats in the 1st and 2nd wards. At the time of the election, Wechsler was 22, a recent

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

graduate and an employee of a local college bookstore. In 1973, while serving on the council, Wechsler came out as a lesbian and DeGrieck as a gay man in response to an anti-LGBT incident at a local restaurant. In 1974, rather than seek re-election, Wechsler moved to

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

, Massachusetts where she went on to become a writer for the '' Gay Community News''. Out lesbian

Kathy Kozachenko {{Infobox officeholder , honorific-prefix = , name = Kathy Kozachenko , native_name = , native_name_lang = , honorific-suffix = , image = , imagesize = , smallimage = , alt ...

was elected to fill Wechsler's seat on the council, becoming the first openly LGBT politician to win an election in the United States.

References

Lesbian politicians American LGBT rights activists Politicians from Ann Arbor, Michigan American LGBT city council members American lesbian writers Michigan city council members Living people Human Rights Party (United States) politicians LGBT people from Michigan University of Michigan alumni Writers from Ann Arbor, Michigan Women city councillors in Michigan Year of birth missing (living people) 21st-century American women {{Michigan-politician-stub