News
Thomas Roberts to co-host Miss Universe pageant in Moscow
Gay MSNBC anchor’s announcement comes amid outrage over Russia’s LGBT rights record
Thomas Roberts (Photo courtesy of MSNBC)
“Courage is contagious,” Roberts wrote in a column his network posted to its website. “I have felt that way since coming out publicly in 2006. I’ve never regretted it.”
Roberts, who married his husband, Patrick Abner, in New York in 2012, further described his decision to co-host the pageant with singer Mel B as “a huge, visible opportunity for LGBT people” everywhere.
“I am not a special case. I am a good person, good spouse, good child, good sibling, good friend and hard worker. That is me,” he wrote. “I am just like millions of LGBT people around the world. We are good, regular, hard-working people who come from solid families. So when I heard there was a chance at this assignment I aggressively went after it. Lo and behold the Miss Universe team, NBC Entertainment and the Trump team agreed and offered it to me.”
Roberts’ announcement comes roughly two months after Andy Cohen told E! News he turned down a request to co-host the pageant, in part, because “he didn’t feel right as a gay man stepping foot into Russia.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin in June signed a bill into law that bans gay propaganda to minors.
A second law that bans foreign same-sex couples and any couple from a country in which gays and lesbians can legally marry from adopting Russian children took effect in July. The Family Equality Council and other LGBT advocacy groups have also criticized a proposal that seeks to allow authorities to deny parental custody based on their sexual orientation.
Author Dan Savage, playwright Harvey Fierstein and others have called for a boycott of the 2014 Winter Olympics that will take place in Sochi, Russia, in February over the Kremlin’s LGBT rights record.
Cher last month said she turned down a request to perform at the games over Russia’s gay propaganda law. LGBT rights advocates have criticized gay singer Elton John over two concerts at which he is scheduled to perform in Moscow and the Russian city of Kazan in December.
John Aravosis of AMERICAblog is among those who questioned Roberts’ decision to co-host the Miss Universe pageant that will take place in the Russian capital on Nov. 9.
“If Thomas Roberts thinks he can give gay Russians ‘hope’, then I’d implore him to do far more while he’s there than simply host the Miss Universe pageant and assume that everyone knows he’s gay and married to a man,” Aravosis wrote earlier on Friday. “The benefits of such a trip are still unclear, the risks however are not.”
The Miss Universe Organization in August criticized Russia’s gay propaganda law and the ongoing anti-LGBT crackdown in the country.
“The Miss Universe Organization believes in equality for all individuals and is deeply concerned by the laws recently enacted in Russia and currently in place in several other countries,” it said. “Both the law, as well as the violence experienced by the LGBT community in Russia, are diametrically opposed to the core values of our company. Our organization has always embodied a spirit of inclusion and is a celebration of people from all countries and walks of life.”
Donald Trump, who co-owns the Miss Universe Organization with NBC Universal, further criticized the Kremlin’s LGBT rights record during an interview with Roberts on Friday.
“I don’t like what it’s all about,” Trump said. “We can go over there and make a difference.”
Roberts was unavailable to speak with the Washington Blade as of deadline, but the gay anchor on Friday further discussed his decision to co-host the pageant during an interview on “Morning Joe”.
“I’m openly gay; I’m happily married and I don’t think anybody’s going to tell me that I’m less than,” Roberts said. “And so for that very reason that’s why I wanted to go and accept this assignment. I think it’s a wonderful assignment because this is going to be seen by a billion people in over 190 countries and if they happen to find out that I’m gay and married and my husband Patrick’s going to be there with me, fantastic.”
Virginia
Va. Senate committee approves resolution to repeal marriage amendment
Outgoing state Sen. Adam Ebbin introduced SJ3
The Virginia Senate Privileges and Elections Committee on Wednesday by a 10-4 vote margin approved a resolution that seeks to repeal a state constitutional amendment that defines marriage as between a man and a woman.
Outgoing state Sen. Adam Ebbin (D-Alexandria) introduced SJ3.
Same-sex couples have been able to legally marry in Virginia since 2014. Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin in 2024 signed a bill that codified marriage equality in state law.
A resolution that seeks to repeal the Marshall-Newman Amendment passed in the General Assembly in 2021. The resolution passed again in 2025.
Two successive legislatures must approve the resolution before it can go to the ballot. Democrats in the Virginia House of Delegates have said the resolution’s passage is among their 2026 legislative priorities.
Iran
Grenell: ‘Real hope’ for gay rights in Iran as result of nationwide protests
Former ambassador to Germany claimed he has sneaked ‘gays and lesbians out of’ country
Richard Grenell, the presidential envoy for special missions of the United States, said on X on Tuesday that he has helped “sneak gays and lesbians out of Iran” and is seeing a change in attitudes in the country.
The post, which now has more than 25,000 likes since its uploading, claims that attitudes toward gays and lesbians are shifting amid massive economic protests across the country.
“For the first time EVER, someone has said ‘I want to wait just a bit,” the former U.S. ambassador to Germany wrote. “There is real hope coming from the inside. I don’t think you can stop this now.”
Grenell has been a longtime supporter of the president.
“Richard Grenell is a fabulous person, A STAR,” Trump posted on Truth Social days before his official appointment to the ambassador role. “He will be someplace, high up! DJT”
Iran, which is experiencing demonstrations across all 31 provinces of the country — including in Tehran, the capital — started as a result of a financial crisis causing the collapse of its national currency. Time magazine credits this uprising after the U.N. re-imposed sanctions in September over the country’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.
As basic necessities like bread, rice, meat, and medical supplies become increasingly unaffordable to the majority of the more than 90 million people living there, citizens took to the streets to push back against Iran’s theocratic regime.
Grenell, who was made president and executive director of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts last year by Trump, believes that people in the majority Shiite Muslim country are also beginning to protest human rights abuses.
Iran is among only a handful of countries in which consensual same-sex sexual relations remain punishable by death, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Virginia
Mark Levine loses race to succeed Adam Ebbin in ‘firehouse’ Democratic primary
State Del. Elizabeth Bennett-Parker won with 70.6 percent of vote
Gay former Virginia House of Delegates member Mark Levine (D-Alexandria) lost his race to become the Democratic nominee to replace gay state Sen. Adam Ebbin (D-Alexandria) in a Jan. 13 “firehouse” Democratic primary.
Levine finished in second place in the hastily called primary, receiving 807 votes or 17.4 percent. The winner in the four-candidate race, state Del. Elizabeth Bennett-Parker, who was endorsed by both Ebbin and Gov.-elect Abigail Spanberger received 3,281 votes or 70.6 percent.
Ebbin, whose 39th Senate District includes Alexandria and parts of Arlington and Fairfax Counties, announced on Jan. 7 that he was resigning effective Feb. 18, to take a job in the Spanberger administration as senior advisor at the Virginia Cannabis Control Authority.
Results of the Jan. 13 primary, which was called by Democratic Party leaders in Alexandria, Arlington, and Fairfax, show that candidates Charles Sumpter, a World Wildlife Fund director, finished in third place with 321 voters or 6.9 percent; and Amy Jackson, the former Alexandria vice mayor, finished in fourth place with 238 votes or 5.1 percent.
Bennett-Parker, who LGBTQ community advocates consider a committed LGBTQ ally, will now compete as the Democratic nominee in a Feb. 10 special election in which registered voters in the 39th District of all political parties and independents will select Ebbin’s replacement in the state senate.
The Alexandria publication ALX Now reports that local realtor Julie Robben Linebery has been selected by the Alexandria Republican City Committee to be the GOP candidate to compete in the Jan. 10 special election. According to ALX Now, Lineberry was the only application to run in a now cancelled special party caucus type event initially called to select the GOP nominees.
It couldn’t immediately be determined if an independent or other party candidate planned to run in the special election.
Bennett-Parker is considered the strong favorite to win the Feb. 10 special election in the heavily Democratic 39th District, where Democrat Ebbin has served as senator since 2012.
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