Staunch LGBTQ+ ally Nancy Pelosi announces retirement after decades in Congress

Nancy Pelosi has announced her retirement from Congress, the BBC reports.

In a video message on Thursday (6 November), long-serving Democrat Nancy Pelosi said she will not be seeking re-election to Congress at the end of her term in January 2027.

The BBC notes that Pelosi, 85, served as the first female Speaker of the House and led her party in the lower chamber of Congress from 2003 until 2023.

“As we go forward, my message to the city I love is this: San Francisco, know your power,” Pelosi said.

“We have made history, we have made progress. We have always led the way, and now we must continue to do so by remaining full participants in our democracy, and fighting for the American ideals we hold dear.”

Nancy Pelosi’s LGBTQ+ allyship

News of her retirement will come as a blow to anyone concerned about LGBTQ+ rights in the US.

In August 2025, Nancy Pelosi explained that she was working on a “national level” to restore gender-affirming care for trans youth, which has been limited or banned across several US states.

While visiting a medical centre in San Francisco on 7 August, she explained that the situation facing trans youth in the US is “really sad”, adding that she flies the transgender flag outside of her office.

“That is something I’m working for at the national level, and we are hoping we can have gender-affirming care for our trans kids,” Nancy Pelosi told reporters when asked about gender-affirming care in California.

In 2023, Nancy Pelosi, she called Republicans enforcing anti-LGBTQ+ legislation “losers,” in a scathing interview, after more than 300 anti-LGBTQ+ bills were introduced in the US that year.

“They’re losers. They’re losing on guns: we still don’t have the legislation we want, but the public is not really with them with all these mass shootings going on,” Pelosi told Advocate.

She has previously spoken how she lost friends because of her support for queer people at the height of the HIV/Aids pandemic. “I lost some friends over it,” she said. “You know, people would say: ‘I’m not coming to your house if you’re having gay people help with your cooking or anything’.”

Speaking to The Advocate, Pelosi recalled her decades of LGBTQ+ support, saying that one of her first interactions with the community, as a member of congress, was at the height of the HIV/Aids crisis.

“My first Pride parade as a member of congress, we walked,” she said. “We got a lot of press because this was well over 35 years ago and not many members of congress were in gay parades at that time.

“I got calls from all over, with people saying: ‘You stood with us’. It meant so much for people beyond San Francisco and the joy that I had marching with my constituents and taking pride.”