Baldwin has served on the Budget and Judiciary Committees of the United States House of Representatives and is currently a member of the Committee on Energy and Commerce.

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Baldwin has enjoyed a committed relationship with her life partner, Lauren Azar, an environmental lawyer, since 1996. The couple resides in a Victorian house in Madison that they are in the process of restoring.

Throughout her political career Baldwin has worked vigorously on many issues, but she is mindful that she is doing so in the context of being a lesbian. In a 1999 interview she recalled a telephone call that she had received six years prior, on the day of her inauguration in the Wisconsin State Assembly. A young man from the northern part of the state told her that he had never heard of her before reading a story in the morning paper, but he said in a "nervous, shaky voice," "I want you to know that I feel differently about myself today."

Baldwin described the call as "very moving," adding that she understood the "symbolic importance" of her election as a glbtq person and for glbtq people. She resolved "to challenge stereotypes" and be an advocate for the whole panoply of her constitutents.

"When a senior in our district says, 'That Tammy Baldwin's fighting for my Social Security,'" she commented, "everything else that I am is secondary because what I'm doing is fighting for her."

In the United States, glbtq candidates have achieved some significant successes at the ballot box in the last three decades, running for and winning local, state, and national elections.

The U.S. gay rights movement has made significant progress toward achieving equality for glbtq Americans, and in the process has become more inclusive and diverse, but much remains to be done.

The American glbtq movement for equality has largely allied itself with the Democratic Party.

Businessman and philanthropist Jared Polis became one of only three openly gay members in Congress, and the first openly gay man elected to Congress as a freshman, when he won election to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2008.