Sheila Kuehl
Kuehl was elected to the California State Assembly in 1994, becoming the first openly gay person elected to the California legislature. While running for office Kuehl found she was able to offset some negative stereotypes people had about lesbians thanks to their familiarity with her role as Zelda. She told an interviewer "When people know gay people personally, they tend to feel differently about the whole community. And all of a sudden, here's a person that they knew very well that they found out was lesbian."
Frieda Rosenthal
In 1919 Frieda Rosenthal joined the Independent Social Democratic Party (""Unabhängige Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands"" / USPD). The USPD had emerged a couple of years earlier in the context of a split of the mainstream Social Democratic Party, following ever more acute tensions arising, primarily, over the party leadership decision back in 1914 to implement what amounted to a parliamentary truce over funding for the war. In 1920 she was elected to the party's Lichtenberg district committee (""Bezirksversammlung""). As the USPD itself split apart, later in 1920 Rosenthal was part of the left wing majority that now joined the newly formed Communist Party (""Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands"" / KPD). She appears never to have abandoned her nursing completely, employed by the welfare department in Berlin-Lichtenberg and from the mid 1920s working in Berlin's main health counselling office. Any more detailed official records concerning her employment during this period were destroyed in the Second World War. In any case, during the 1920s political work became the priority. In 1924 she was elected a member of the party leadership team (""Bezirksleitung"") for . Her specific responsibilities lay on the areas of agitation and propaganda (in the portmaneau word of the time, "Agitprop") and, later, women's training and education. The same year she was elected to the Berlin city council (""Stadtverordnetenversammlung""), representing "Electoral District 14" (Berlin-Lichtenberg). During the next few years her party affiliations changed, but she continued to be elected to the Berlin city council without interruption until 1933.