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Trans woman Danica Roem beat her anti-trans opponent by focusing on ... roads. Seriously.

It turns out that if you run a campaign centered on real issues, people take notice.

"To every person who's ever been singled out, who's ever been stigmatized, who's ever been the misfit, who's ever been the kid in the corner, who's ever needed someone to stand up for them when they didn't have a voice of their own ... this one's for you," said Virginia delegate-elect Danica Roem during a fiery victory speech on Tuesday, Nov. 7.

Roem is a transgender woman, but her gender identity is secondary to the main issue she campaigned on: fixing Route 28.

"That's why I got in this race, because I'm fed up with the frickin' road over in my home town," she said to laughter and applause during the speech, calling on the state legislature to fix existing problems rather than creating new ones.

Roem's election makes her the first out transgender person who will be elected and seated in a state legislature. Photo by Danica Roem for Delegate.

Roem used her speech to highlight the importance of focusing on unifying issues like infrastructure, ensuring teachers get fair pay, working to expand access to health care, and finding cost-effective solutions to local problems.

"This is the important stuff," she told the crowd. "We can't get lost in discrimination. We can't get lost in BS. We can't get lost tearing each other down."

It's that view, that it's the government's job to address issues of infrastructure and public health, that set her apart from her opponent, incumbent candidate Bob Marshall. Marshall, the self-described "chief homophobe" of Virginia, is perhaps best known for introducing a so-called "bathroom bill" designed to discriminate against trans people. Seeing a politician so obsessed with his anti-LGBTQ views have his seat won out from under him by a trans woman just feels ... symbolic.

Oh yeah, did I mention Roem is alsoa singer in a heavy metal band?

Mailers sent out by her opponent's campaign before the election warned that "[His] defeat would signal that holding these [anti-LGBTQ] principles is a detriment to being elected."

Hopefully, Marshall is right about that. The people who represent us in government should represent all of us, and his defeat shows many voters aren't willing to put up with elected officials who don't see things that way.

In a recent interview on a right-wing radio show, Marshall showed his disdain for Roem and trans people, generally:

"It is not a civil right to masquerade your fantasies as reality. ... I’ve drawn a line. I’m not leaving it, because I don’t make the laws of nature but I think I understand them, at least at this fundamental level. I never flunked biology, so I’m not going to call a man a woman, period."

If a candidate wants to run on a platform of legislating trans people out of public existence or thinks it's OK accuse their political opponents of defying the laws of nature, that should be detrimental to their odds of being elected.

We need more candidates like Roem whose political ambitions revolve around how best to help their constituents.

This country belongs to all of us. As Roem said in her victory speech (which is excellent, and you should watch it below) with all the intensity of a seasoned politician:

"No matter what you look like, where you come from, how you worship, who you love, how you identify — and yeah, how you rock — that if you have good public policy ideas and you’re well qualified for office, bring those ideas to the table because this is your America too."

Just as it's not enough for Democrats to simply run on being not-Trump, perhaps this is a sign that it's not enough for Republicans to bank on voters hating the same groups as them. During the 2016 election, then-North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory ran hard on the state's anti-trans bathroom bill only to come up short; Marshall did the same in his race against Roem.

Maybe, just maybe, empathy is winning out, and maybe people are coming to understand that the purpose of government isn't to determine who to oppress, but how to help lift us all.

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Famous musicians are trying to stop an anti-trans Texas bill before it becomes law.

"Bills like these are poison."

So reads a letter addressed to "Texas Leaders" signed by over 100 prominent artists in opposition to Texas Senate Bill 6 and House Bill 1362. Both are so-called "bathroom bills" that would require transgender students in public schools and people who work in certain state buildings to use the restroom that corresponds to their biological sex rather than their gender identity.

The letter is signed by a roster of celebrities including Ariana Grande, Sting, Sara Bareilles, Amy Poehler, Emma Stone, and Laverne Cox — who recently shouted out Gavin Grimm, a transgender Virginia student whose school board barred him from using the boys bathroom  — at the Grammys.

Image by The Ally Project.

"Transgender and gender non-conforming people are already subjected to bullying and harassment," the letter reads. "Can you imagine the message these bills send to children — the message of 'that child is unwelcome, that child is dangerous?'"

After North Carolina's HB2 was passed, artists responded with denunciations and boycotts. This time, the performers are taking a stand against the bill to prevent it from becoming law in the first place.

The letter was spearheaded by Jack Antonoff, lead singer and songwriter of Bleachers and co-founder of The Ally Coalition, which is sponsoring the campaign against the bills in conjunction with Equality Texas and GLAAD.

"What we want to do is stop it, but if we can’t stop it, we want to try and cast a light on it," Antonoff says. "We don’t want it to go through quietly. We want people to know what’s going on."

Jack Antonoff. Photo by Craig Barritt/Getty Images.

Antonoff was motivated to take action on the legislation, in part, through his work with New Alternatives, a New York City-based support organization for homeless LGBTQ youth. Bills like SB6, he says, make things worse for everyone by ostracizing LGBTQ children from their peers and communities.

The Ally Coalition plans to target six different categories of bills.

In addition to these "bathroom bills," the organization will work to oppose state-level bills meant to repeal same-sex marriage, bills that allow groups on college campuses to discriminate against LGBTQ students, religious liberty bills, bills that strip housing and workplace protections from LGBTQ people, and bills that require school officials to out LGBTQ students to their parents.

In the meantime, the group is urging its followers to sign on to the campaign and for those who live in Texas to call their representatives and speak out. Their site includes a form with a sample letter for supporters who want to register their opposition to the law.

Antonoff wants his fellow performers to be bold and address the issue at their shows.

Ariana Grande, a signatory to the letter, performs in Las Vegas. Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images.

"The biggest way you can fight back as someone with an audience is to speak to your audience," he says.

Getting thousands of screaming concertgoers to scream against discriminatory legislation, he hopes, might just wake up a state legislator or two.

And now is the time — before anyone gets hurt.

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The Supreme Court announced it'll hear a major transgender rights case. This is big.

The Supreme Court did something pretty extraordinary on Oct. 28, 2016.

It announced that next year, the justices will hear a likely game-changing case for transgender rights in the United States.

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

Usually the justices are hesitant to hear cases on hot-button topics with large ramifications, as Reuters noted — especially now that the court is short its tie-breaking ninth justice.

But not this time.

In 2017, the court will decide whether senior Gavin Grimm will be able to use the bathroom that matches his gender identity at his high school in rural Virginia.

Grimm was assigned female at birth. But in 2014, when he was beginning high school as a freshman, he came out as transgender to his family. He began undergoing hormone treatments and changed his name.

Since Grimm is a guy, he naturally wanted to use the boys' restroom. It caused an uproar.

Grimm's principal allowed him to use the bathroom that matched his identity. The school district, however, wasn't thrilled. It mandated that students in Gloucester County use restrooms that correspond to the sex they were assigned at birth, NBS News reported.

As for trans students like Grimm? They would need to use single-occupant bathroom facilities.

"I continue to suffer daily because of the school board’s decision to make my bathroom use a matter of public debate," Grimm wrote in The Washington Post.

Grimm, arguing the new rule left him feeling isolated and stigmatized, sued. The Fourth U.S. Circuit of Appeals in Virginia agreed with him, too — the school district's mandate violated Title IX, a measure that prohibits discrimination by sex in any school receiving federal funding, the court argued.  

Photo by Lior Mizrahi /Getty Images.

It was a landmark decision, raising the bar for protections of transgender students.

The Supreme Court justices put the lower court's ruling on hold in August to decide whether to take up the case themselves — which leaves us where we are today.

The court's decision in 2017 could have a lasting impact on these discriminatory "bathroom bills" that have crept up across the country, most notably in North Carolina.

With approval from Gov. Pat McCrory, the Tar Heel State passed HB2 earlier this year — a measure that strips away many LGBTQ protections and forces all North Carolinians to use the bathroom that matches the sex they were assigned at birth in government buildings.

Gov. Pat McCrory. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

It's been called the most anti-LGBTQ state law in America; it's reallynot all that popular with Americans; and — aside from being morally reprehensible — it's terrible for business, too.

Just this week, the state lost out on a $250 million business development when a real estate firm decided to go elsewhere — and take its job openings, too — according to Business Insider. HB2 played a major role in the firm's decision.

Grimm's case is causing a wave of hope among transgender activists and allies who want to make sure all American students can feel safe at school — and not stigmatized — regardless of how they identify.

"Now that I am visible, I want to use my position to help the country see transgender people like me as real people just living our lives," wrote Grimm. "We are not perverse. We are not broken. We are not sick. We are not freaks."

"I hope the justices of the Supreme Court can see me and the rest of the transgender community for who we are — just people," Grimm wrote. "And rule accordingly."

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We the people have the power to change nonsensical bills. Here's how.

North Carolina's wildly unpopular HB2 law has been a disaster. Why'd they do it?

By now, you've probably heard about North Carolina's HB2 "bathroom bill" — or at least the response to it.

Even if you're not typically someone who follows North Carolina state politics (there are only so many hours in the day), it's likely you've seen stories about musicians like Bruce Springsteen boycotting the state, the NBA moving its 2017 all-star game to Louisiana, a Broadway composer speaking out, or the NCAA adjusting its tournament schedule as a result of the March 2016 law.

In September 2016, the NCAA announced it would move seven championship games out of the state. Photo by Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images.

The part of the law that's received the most focus has to do with whether transgender people should be allowed to use bathrooms that match their gender identity (as they have been, to your knowledge or not, for pretty much forever).

The law's proponents believe trans people should have to use bathrooms that match whatever gender is on their birth certificate — a legal document that is notoriously difficult, and sometimes impossible, to update — which causes a host of issues we've written about before.

North Carolina's Republican Governor Pat McCrory signed the controversial bill into law in March 2016. Photo by Davis Turner/Getty Images.

In other words, it's a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad law. On top of that, just 32% of the state's voters approve of it, the cancelled events and boycotts aren't exactly helping the state's economy, it's giving the governor headaches in his re-election bid, and lawmakers have had to allocate $500,000 in emergency fundingfor the law's legal defense.

So, why do legislatures sometimes pass unpopular laws that don't seem to make sense? It's complicated (and very frustrating).

The same goes for questions about why sometimes things that are very popular don't become law no matter how much of a slam dunk they seem. (For example, requiring background checks before purchasing a gun is supported by nearly 90% of Americans, but there's still not been a lot of lawmaking movement on that issue.)

In a 2013 article for the National Review (later republished by The Atlantic), authors Elahe Izadi and Clare Foran explore this issue, landing on something most of us would probably rather not have to deal with: "procedural shenanigans." That phrase, used in the article by an aide to Senator Harry Reid, sums up many of the baffling struggles that exist in the legislative process.

Let's take a look at a real-life example of "procedural shenanigans": our response to the Zika virus.

A real-life example would be something like what's currently going on with Zika funding. Hopefully, we can all agree that the Zika virus is bad (it is), and that the federal government is needed to help fight it (they should). Well, currently, $1.1 billion in funding is being held up in Congress.

Who's fault is this? Well, if you listen to Republicans, it's the Democrats' fault.

But if you ask Democrats, it's the Republicans' fault.

The truth is that this funding is being held up by things that have nothing to do with the Zika virus — they're only tangentially related to the issue. In this case, it's a battle over whether or not we should ban the Confederate flag from flying in veterans' cemeteries (Republicans are against this ban) or if Planned Parenthood should be blocked from receiving additional funding (Democrats are against this block).

Mosquitoes carry the Zika virus. Photo by Nelson Almeida/AFP/Getty Images.

It's frustrating, but it happens all the time. Legislators will try to hold certain bills hostage to get something else they want. Or maybe they'll try to tack on an amendment designed to torpedo the bill (also known as a poison pill). This is politics as usual, but it's not right.

That's why it's important to hold lawmakers accountable. Whether this is about the bill in North Carolina, the holdup on the Zika funding, or anything else, we have leverage of our own.

Elected officials are meant to represent the views of their constituency. While we can write letters to our state, local, and federal representatives urging votes on clean pieces of legislation, that's not all. We can protest, we can make our voices heard, and we can make it known that we don't stand for a piece of legislation.

A popular hashtag for opponents of HB2 is #WeAreNotThis. Photo by Sara D. Davis/Getty Images.

And if that doesn't work, we can vote officials out and try again with someone new. It's easy to feel helpless when it comes to politics, but as a voter, you're anything but.

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

It's always a good time to register to vote. If you're not already, take a few moments today to take control of your power.

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