On January 17, transgender people in Virginia will be able to breathe easier knowing they have ally in the state’s governor’s mansion again. Anti-trans Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin will be out, and a historic Democratic woman will be in the governor's seat. Keep up with the latest in LGBTQ + news and politics. Sign up for The Advocate's email newsletter. When Abigail Spanberger , a former CIA officer and three-term member of Congress, takes the oath as the Commonwealth’s 75th governor, the parade that follows will not simply be ceremonial. It will be political . It will be cultural. And, for LGBTQ+ Virginians who have spent years bracing against erasure and rollback, it will be deeply personal. Related: Newly elected Virginia lieutenant governor appoints LGBTQ+ advocate to transition team Marching through downtown Richmond will be Virginia Pride and Diversity Richmond — queer organizations whose presence in the inaugural procession marks a sharp departure from the Youngkin years, when LGBTQ+ communities were routinely sidelined as legislative battles over transgender students , classroom speech, and public accommodation laws reshaped daily life. Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger will be sworn in on January 17 in Richmond, Virginia. Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images “This dark cloud that has hung over Virginia, particularly as it pertains to the dignity and the rights of LGBTQ folks, is going to be lifted,” said James Millner, executive director of Virginia Pride, who described the moment as a “huge relief” for queer and transgender Virginians who have felt their lives become political weapons. Related: LGBTQ+ ally Abigail Spanberger trounces anti-trans Republican to win Virginia governor’s race Millner told The Advocate that Virginia Pride was “thrilled” to be invited to participate directly in the inaugural parade, an invitation he called “a huge honor” and a deliberate signal that visibility and belonging will be part of the new administration’s public posture from its first moments in power. “It sends a really powerful statement,” he said, “that Abigail Spanberger wanted representation and visibility from the queer community in her inaugural events.” But the symbolism is tethered to policy. Millner said advocates are looking to Spanberger to restore and aggressively enforce the Virginia Values Act, a comprehensive 2020 civil rights law that added sexual orientation and gender identity to the state’s nondiscrimination statutes and created some of the strongest legal protections for LGBTQ+ people anywhere in the South. Related: Anti-trans campaign against Spanberger in Va. governor race is failing. Poll shows why: people don't care The law bars discrimination in housing, employment, credit, and public accommodations, requires equal access to places such as hotels, restaurants, schools, and retail businesses, and authorizes private lawsuits for discrimination — protections that advocates say were underenforced during the Youngkin administration. Millner said he is hopeful the Spanberger administration will “lean into that law as a platform for enforcing those protections and advancing those protections for LGBTQ+ people.” The parade’s architecture reads like a census of modern Virginia: immigrant-led organizations, Girl Scouts and 4-H students, Bollywood dancers and Korean dance troupes, labor groups and public school bands, firefighters and paramedics, NASA researchers and military cadets. It is, in effect, a living map of who Virginia is and who it intends to serve. Related: Glenn Youngkin injects trans issues into Virginia governor's race, where Democrat Abigail Spanberger leads Spanberger’s inauguration arrives at a moment when the political temperature around LGBTQ+ life remains volatile across the country. But in Virginia, the 2025 election cycle produced a quiet rebuke of grievance-driven politics. Democrats swept statewide offices, and efforts to weaponize transgender existence as a campaign issue failed to deliver the electoral payoff Republicans had promised. That shift is already visible in the composition of the incoming government. Lt. Gov.-elect Ghazala Hashmi appointed Equality Virginia Executive Director Narissa Rahaman to her transition team, embedding LGBTQ+ leadership into the fabric of the new administration. Millner said he hopes Spanberger will explicitly name LGBTQ+ communities in her inaugural address — not as symbols, but as people whose lives are bound up in state policy. He added Spanberger made a “concerted effort to engage queer and trans folks” not only in her campaign but in its leadership — a move that promises “seats at the table that we haven’t had… for the last four years.”