Holly Ryan was honored by the year’s Pride festivities for being a trailblazer—the first-ever transgender city councilor elected in the state, someone who stood up and went to the state legislature to demand civil rights and dignity for transgender people across the commonwealth—and for fights she waged so younger transgender people wouldn’t have to.

There was the bill she spent several years prodding lawmakers to let out of the Judiciary Committee. There was the nasty fight over a bill for public building accommodations people nicknamed “the bathroom bill.” There was the decades-long push for acceptance of gender-affirming care that finally saw passage in 2022.

“I sometimes think people forget,” she said as she sat down for a light breakfast in the Mt. Ida Campus cafeteria—a place near her home where she regularly met with constituents as a city councilor.

At 73, Ryan is tired of going to battle. But as someone seeking to save her community from an administration seemingly set on erasing it, she’s not planning to sit back any time soon.

Keeping the Bay State a safe space

After losing her bid for reelection to the City Council in 2023, Ryan focused her energy on Beacon Hill, as an advocate lobbying for LGBTQ rights.

It’s a purpose she’s held intently for decades, playing an instrumental role in pushing transgender rights legislation through the legislature and taking on Democratic leadership whenever that purpose was interrupted.

Take the recent dustup over a spending bill, for example. In April, Massachusetts House of Representatives passed an amendment filed by Rep. John Gaskey, R-Carver, containing language that could have banned transgender students from public school athletic teams.

As the spending bill to which the amendment was added made its way to a vote, the Bay State Stonewall Democrats—an LGBTQ advocacy group, of which Ryan is co-chair—jumped into action and took on the Democratic House leadership and various members over the move.

Shortly after, Rep. Ken Gordon, House chair of the Joint Committee on Education, proposed an amendment that mandated an extensive study be conducted and reported out from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education before Gaskey’s ban could even be considered, effectively relegating the transgender athletes ban to a quick limbo and slow death.

With that out of the way, Ryan has put most of her focus on Washington, D.C., where, since Jan. 20, she has much bigger fish to fry.

Former City Councilor Holly Ryan and Mayor Ruthanne Fuller talk at Newton’s Pride flag ceremony on June 4, 2024. Photo by Bryan McGonigle

Tempering the Trump tide

President Donald Trump has made going after the transgender and nonbinary communities a major focus of his administration’s first six months in office. In his inauguration speech, he said his administration would only recognize male and female genders. His State Department is refusing to issue passports that reflect a transgender person’s identified gender. He wants school staff who recognize a trans student’s chosen pronouns to be reported to the attorney general. He’s banned transgender troops from the military, again. He even had the Stonewall Monument website remove transgender people (it refers to “LGB,” not “LGBT”), despite some of the bricks that started the Stonewall riot having been thrown by transgender women.

The list goes on, but so does Holly Ryan. She’s also on the Board of Directors of the National Stonewall Democrats, a network of 40 chapters that formed over the last couple of years and one that Ryan says is drastically needed now.

“Our whole purpose is to fight Trump every day on every level,” she said. “On his first day in office, he wrote an executive order to basically outlaw my existence. And every week, it gets worse.”

Trump isn’t backing down, either, despite his executive orders being challenged daily in court.

“That’s what dictators do,” Ryan said. “He’s a fascist, and I’m not going pull any punches on that. ”

Ryan scoffs at calls for softening activism and toning down LGBTQ celebrations.

“The thing is, some people think we’re going to hide, or we’re scared… No, this is when we have to be louder,” she said. “This is when we have to tell people we’re here, we’re not going anywhere, you know, and we’re going to fight this government on every level. They’re not going to win this. We’ve had harder battles in the past to get to where we are today.”

Ryan feels those battle victories are a reason LGBTQ rights opponents have gotten louder, too.

“We’re legitimized, and when that happens, people get scared,” she said. “The right wing gets scared. Religious people get scared.”

One thing that keeps Ryan going is knowing those people are loud but not representative of the majority of people she encounters, even among churchgoing folks.

“I mean, I’m a practicing Catholic,” Ryan said. “I’m part of my LGBT group in my Catholic Church here in Newton, at St. Ignatius at Boston College. So you know, when I see the factions of the religious Christians that are so loud, they’re not the majority. They are not the majority.”

Ryan is happy to see gay people in the fight. There wasn’t always unity between the gay and transgender communities. In fact, it wasn’t until President Barack Obama used the acronym “LGBT” that the “T” became an officially recognized part of what would eventually be known as the queer community.

And that unity was shown in the 2024 election results. Despite people fearing gay men and lesbians were shifting toward Trump because of a few gay and lesbian MAGA personalities on social media gaining attention, LGBTQ voters made up one of the only demographics to vote in less numbers for Trump in 2024 than in 2020 (the other demographic was Black women).

Numbers also give Ryan hope. Trump didn’t win a majority of the vote. He won a majority of state electoral college votes, but he only won 49 percent of the vote.

And given voter turnout was a little under 70 percent, that 49 percent was an even smaller portion of the overall voting age population.

“And then if you add up all the other votes that were on non-votes [write-ins and blanks] that were cast, it was more than what he got, and it makes me feel good to know that,” she said.

The Trump campaign’s anti-transgender ads weren’t played in every state, either—just in certain battleground states where anti-trans legislation has gained popularity.

“He doesn’t have any mandate,” Ryan said bluntly.

And she wants Democratic leaders to stop acting like Trump has one, especially when it comes to transgender rights.

She named California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has taken to talking about transgender athletes negatively with conservatives on his podcasts, as well as U.S. Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Arizona, and U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Salem, who have joined the call to examine transgender athlete bans.

Lacing up for the long-haul

Ryan recently met with U.S. Rep. Jake Auchincloss forn an hour to discuss Trump’s assault on LGBTQ rights.

“He’s a smart guy,” Ryan said. “There are some things I don’t agree with him on, but I agree with him on most. And he gives me access. He honored me on the floor of Congress.”

Ryan expects gay and lesbian activism to ramp up and catch up with the transgender community soon.

“Marriage equality is next. They’re going to try and, in the Supreme Court, end marriage equality, and that’s when the gay and lesbian communities are going to really get riled up and,” she said. ”You know, some were against the trans community. And we’ll see that they’ve got skin in the fight too.”

Ryan plans to keep plugging away at everything the Trump administration does to the LGBTQ community, but she said she’s just biding time until voters can make a correction next year.

“I believe we have to make it to the midterms,” Ryan said. “And I totally believe that we at least are going to take back the House in the midterms. I believe that, but we have to get there first, and I’m afraid of some of the things that can happen—to mostly the trans community—and if they start to arrest Americans, we would be the first ones to be arrested.”

There’s also gay adoption on the line, a push to allow businesses to discriminate on the basis of sexuality and gender identity, and more.

“I really wanted to retire now, but with the Trump thing, I can’t,” Ryan said. In fact, she said, the Pride festivities honor was a way for LGBTQ organizations to keep her in the fight, with her decades of experience and countless important connections in state and federal government.