After the midterm elections on Tuesday, the National LGBT Bar Association held a press conference with guest speakers Shannon Minter and Tobias Bearing Wolfe. Shannon Minter, a transgender man, is a graduate of Cornell law school, a civil rights lawyer and legal director for the National Center for Lesbian rights. Wolff is a professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania and has contributed on CNN as a political/legal expert.

“There were some surprises,” says Minter about the victories in the midterms. “Usually in midterms there is a turn of both houses but the Democrats held the Senate. We will be able to stop the far right and anti-gay congresspersons from enacting measures that are affirmatively harmful or punitive and the Senate should be able to prevent any turn back from the progressive gains that we have made.”

“I was also really impressed that among the many LGBT candidates who won their election,” Minter said, “we saw the first openly transgender judge elected to the bench anywhere in the country.” He is speaking of Victoria Kolakowski, the San Francisco Chronicle’s pick for Superior Court Judge in Alameda County. “And despite being targeted, our openly gay congresspersons like Barney Frank and Tammy Baldwin are back in their seats along with a new gay congressman from Rhode Island.”

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