Local
O’Malley: Pass a marriage bill this year
Md. governor addresses Creating Change in Baltimore
BALTIMORE — Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley called on state lawmakers to pass a bill legalizing same-sex marriage and another measure barring discrimination based on gender identity during a speech Sunday at the Creating Change conference sponsored by the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force.
“Maryland can be the seventh state to pass a civil marriage equality law,” O’Malley said. “We need to get it done this year.”
In a short speech that included references to Baltimore’s role in the creation of the United States, O’Malley repeatedly cited the need to protect religious liberties and called for a civilized debate on the contentious issue of marriage.
“Laws matter but words also matter,” he said, “… we must choose words of compassion.”
He also spoke about the bill to ban anti-transgender discrimination.
“Discrimination [based] on gender identity is wrong,” O’Malley said to loud applause. “Passing a law to protect transgender people … is the right thing to do.”
Fellow Democrat Thomas “Mike” Miller, the Maryland Senate president, does not support the bill. According to Gender Rights Maryland, Miller said he only has time “for one gay bill this session.”
“We do not have Senate President Miller’s support,” Gender Rights Maryland said in a statement. “That has been the case for five years, and remains the overwhelming roadblock.”
O’Malley’s remarks came during the closing brunch of the 24th annual Creating Change conference, which drew about 3,000 attendees to Baltimore. His wife, first lady Katie O’Malley, spoke Thursday and caused a minor stir when she referred to opponents of the bill in last year’s session as “cowards.” She later issued a statement that she regretted those comments. Gov. O’Malley did not directly mention the incident in his remarks Sunday, though he did make a veiled reference to his wife.
He said that sometimes people “respond with words of hurt rather than words of healing” and added that “we must also have the humility and strength to apologize and seek forgiveness.”
O’Malley was introduced by Task Force deputy executive director Darlene Nipper, who described the O’Malleys as “very good friends to our community.” O’Malley was warmly received by the packed crowd and received a standing ovation at the end of his remarks.
Lyndsay Smith, 28, a Towson University graduate student and longtime Maryland resident, said it was important to hear directly from the governor.
“I don’t think he said anything that’s not been said before,” she said. “But there’s power in his being here and having his support.”
The Maryland Senate is scheduled to take up the marriage bill this week. A committee hearing is set for Tuesday in Annapolis.
District of Columbia
Mayor Bowser signs bill requiring insurers to cover PrEP
‘This is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS’
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser on March 20 signed a bill approved by the D.C. Council that requires health insurance companies to cover the costs of HIV prevention or PrEP drugs for D.C. residents at risk for HIV infection.
Like all legislation approved by the Council and signed by the mayor, the bill, called the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act, was sent to Capitol Hill for a required 30-day congressional review period before it takes effect as D.C. law.
Gay D.C. Council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5) last year introduced the bill.
Insurance coverage for PrEP drugs has been provided through coverage standards included in the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. But AIDS advocacy organizations have called on states and D.C. to pass their own legislation requiring insurance coverage of PrEP as a safeguard in case federal policies are weakened or removed by the Trump administration, which has already reduced federal funding for HIV/AIDS-related programs.
Like legislation passed by other states, the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act requires insurers to cover all PrEP drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Studies have shown that PrEP drugs, which can be taken as pills or by injection just twice a year, are highly effective in preventing HIV infection.
“I think this is a win for our community,” Parker said after the D.C. Council voted unanimously to approve the bill on its first vote on the measure in February. “And this is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS.”
District of Columbia
Blade editor to be inducted into D.C. Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame
Kevin Naff marks 24 years with publication this year
Longtime Washington Blade Editor Kevin Naff will be inducted into D.C.’s Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame in June, the group announced this week.
Hall of Fame honorees are chosen by the Society of Professional Journalists’ Washington, D.C., Pro Chapter. Naff and two other inductees — Seth Borenstein, a Washington-based national science writer for the AP and Cheryl W. Thompson, an award-winning correspondent for National Public Radio — will be celebrated at the chapter’s Dateline Awards dinner on Tuesday, June 9, at the National Press Club. The dinner’s emcee will be Kojo Nnamdi, host of WAMU radio’s weekly “Politics Hour.”
“I am tremendously honored by this recognition,” Naff said. “I have spent a lifetime in the D.C. area learning from so many talented journalists and am humbled to be considered in their company. Thank you to SPJ and to all the LGBTQ pioneers who came before me who made this possible.”
Naff joined the Blade in 2002 after years in print and digital journalism. He worked as a financial reporter for Reuters in New York before moving to Baltimore in 1996 to launch the Baltimore Sun’s website. He spent four years at the Sun before leaving for an internet startup and later joining the mobile data group at Verizon Wireless working on the first generation of mobile apps.
He then moved to the Blade and has served as the publication’s longest-tenured editor. In 2023, Naff published his first book, “How We Won the War for LGBTQ Equality — And How Our Enemies Could Take It All Away.”
Previous Hall of Fame inductees include luminaries in journalism like Wolf Blitzer, Benjamin Bradlee, Bob Woodward, Andrea Mitchell, and Edgar Allen Poe. The Blade’s senior news reporter Lou Chibbaro Jr. was inducted in 2015.
Maryland
Supreme Court ruling against conversion therapy bans could affect Md. law
Then-Gov. Larry Hogan signed statute in 2018
By PAMELA WOOD, JOHN-JOHN WILLIAMS IV, and MADELEINE O’NEILL | The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled against a law banning “conversion therapy” for LGBTQ kids in Colorado, a ruling that also could apply to Maryland’s ban on the discredited practice.
An 8-1 high court majority sided with a Christian counselor who argues the law banning talk therapy violates the First Amendment. The justices agreed that the law raises free speech concerns and sent it back to a lower court to decide whether it meets a legal standard that few laws pass.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the court’s majority, said the law “censors speech based on viewpoint.” The First Amendment, he wrote, “stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country.”
The rest of this article can be read on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
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