How Michigan’s First Openly Gay Senator, Jeremy Moss, Finds Resilience Amid Election Uncertainty

The trailblazer encourages 'tough conversations' in the years ahead

Moss1 — Sen. Jeremy Moss. Photo: senatedems.com

Published: November 21, 2024 | Last Updated: November 21, 2024

I know many people have genuine worries about their future and the future of our country following the recent election results.

The first election in which I could vote was 2004. That year the majority of the Michigan voters banned same-sex unions in our state constitution. At just 18 years old, I wondered if I even had a future at all.

That’s my lens from which I’ve viewed each successive election: Someone’s future is on every ballot. And it’s why I’ve centered my work in the Legislature on protecting voting rights, because voting rights can secure all other rights.

I, too, am worried about the impact of the election on the futures of women, people of color, religious minorities, immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community, our healthcare, our climate, Ukraine, the Middle East … the list goes on. We could be facing crisis upon crisis.

So what’s the path forward?

I take the same lessons from when I was 18 and apply them to now: You can’t wait for anyone else to stand up for you. You have to stand up for yourself.

If enough of us are willing to stand up for ourselves, we can make a difference together.
Jeremy Moss

You’ve got to keep having tough conversations with your family, your neighbors, your co-workers — as Harvey Milk would say, where you shop and where you eat, for your sake and for their sake — about how the politics over the next two to four years will impact you personally.

Especially with the people who you think disagree with you.

I’ve served in some of the most hostile political environments, but I know I’ve made an impact — sometimes incremental, sometimes consequential — by speaking out as the youngest city councilman on a board of 80-year-olds and 90-year-olds, as a state representative in the Michigan House with a bigger Republican majority than they just won, as the first out gay senator (especially in a Senate run by Mike Shirkey, no less!), and as a public Jew in this hellish year of rising antisemitism.

There’s a narrative emerging from this election that we’ve become a country of selfish voters, but I’ve found that even people with the most hardened views still can find room for empathy for the plight of others if only they hear from you directly.

If enough of us are willing to stand up for ourselves, we can make a difference together.

And, as much as this election felt like a crushing defeat, we should not dismiss the wins we can celebrate. Around the country, reproductive freedom proposals won in seven states, including Missouri and Montana. At home in Michigan, we elected Elissa Slotkin to the U.S. Senate and expanded a Democratic-nominated majority on our state Supreme Court.

Ultimately, one and a half percent separated the presidential candidates in Michigan, which is hardly a wholesale rejection of one political view or a full embrace of another.

GOP beating Dems 2017 — Time Magazine, 2017.

I still hang onto a copy of Time Magazine from October 2017 with the cover story: “Democrats are in their worst shape since 1929. Can anything save them?”

Thirteen months later was the blue wave election. Democrats won the governor, secretary of state and attorney general offices in Michigan. We took back the U.S. House. We won the presidency in 2020. In 2022, our candidates flipped the state House and Senate and voters delivered a Democratic trifecta in Michigan for the first time in 40 years, where we spent a term making a real difference and improving the lives of families all throughout our state.

If I’ve learned anything in my time in office, it’s that a year in politics is a lifetime. Yes, a year from now our country may look a lot different. But, a year after that on Election Day 2026, it could look a lot better if we work together to stand up for ourselves.