GAY REP ANNOUNCES RESIGNATION

John McDonald

The LGBT community’s elder statesman is leaving Congress. Rhode Island Congressman David Cicilline, the senior member of the 11 out LGBT members in the House of Representatives, announced he is leaving Washington, D.C. to lead his state’s premier philanthropic organization.

“The chance to lead the Rhode Island Foundation was unexpected, but it is an extraordinary opportunity to have an even more direct impact,” Cicilline said in a statement released Feb. 21. First elected in 2011, the seven-term Democrat said serving the people of Rhode Island’s First District has been “an honor of a lifetime.”

“For more than a decade the people of Rhode Island entrusted me with a sacred duty to represent them in Congress, and it is a responsibility I put my heart and soul into every day to make life better for the residents and families of our state,” Cicilline said.

The 62-year-old attorney, born and raised in Rhode Island, became the nation’s first gay mayor of a state capital in 2002 when Providence voters elected him by a landslide.