A ‘pride match’ between Iran and Egypt — and Washington state’s gay leaders couldn’t be happier about it

This post was originally published on Politico.

SEATTLE — On Thursday, the Washington state House speaker and its Senate president — likely the country’s first-ever pairing of openly gay state capital legislative leaders — met to strategize with progressive campaigners against a pair of conservative-backed ballot initiatives that would impose new rules on transgender children in schools and sports.

To defeat the measures, the campaign will have to convince voters beyond Seattle’s progressive enclaves to accept their arguments about privacy, liberty and acceptance.

But on Friday, Washington’s LGBTQ+ leaders were thinking about how they might address an even more hard-to-reach constituency: citizens of Egypt and Iran, whose