Delaware Democratic Party Pride Caucus (2026)

02/06/2026

Stop by our booth at Delaware Pride on Saturday, from 10am - 5pm. Located on the Delaware Legislative Green, 411 Legislative Avenue, Dover, DE.

Booth D9.

Hope to see you there!

02/06/2026

Pride Month and the People Who Served in Silence

LGBTQ Americans have defended this country since before it had a name for them. They flew the missions, stood the watches, manned the guns, and carried the wounded. Many did it knowing that if the truth came out, the same nation they protected would discharge them in disgrace.

Harvey Milk served as a Navy diving officer during the Korean War. His commanding officer called him outstanding. The Navy forced him out in 1955 once it questioned his sexual orientation, and he left with a discharge that branded a patriot as a problem. He went on to become one of the first openly gay elected officials in America before he was assassinated for it. He was wearing his Navy diver belt buckle the day he was killed.

Leonard Matlovich earned a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star in Vietnam. He stepped on a land mine serving a country that would later throw him out for who he loved. The epitaph he chose says it plainly. The military gave him a medal for killing a man and a discharge for loving one.

For decades the policy was to look away or to purge. Don't Ask, Don't Tell ended more than thirteen thousand careers before Congress repealed it in 2011. Every one of those discharges cost the country a trained, willing, capable defender. None of it made us safer. It only made us smaller.

We are not telling this history because it is finished. We are telling it because it is repeating. This time last June, the Navy stripped Harvey Milk's name from the ship that honored him, and it timed the insult to Pride Month on purpose. Thousands of transgender service members, people already in uniform, already deployed, already meeting every standard asked of them, are being forced out right now under a policy that mistakes prejudice for readiness.

A country does not strengthen its military by firing the people willing to die for it. Service is service. Courage is courage. The oath does not ask who you love before it asks what you are willing to give.

This Pride Month, the Delaware Democratic Veterans and Military Families Caucus honors every LGBTQ American who has worn the uniform, named and unnamed, remembered and erased. You earned your place. We will not let anyone tell you otherwise.