Local
D.C. Council backs DP ‘termination’ bill
Correcting a legal quirk
A second and final vote on the Domestic Partnership Termination Recognition Amendment Act has been scheduled for the Council’s next legislative session on Dec. 1. (Photo by Andrew Wiseman; courtesy Wikimedia Commons)
The D.C. Council on Tuesday voted unanimously to give preliminary approval to a bill that would allow couples that had domestic partnerships legally registered in another jurisdiction to terminate those partnerships by judicial decree in the District.
The bill, the Domestic Partnership Termination Recognition Amendment Act of 2015, would amend the city’s existing domestic partnership law to correct a “legal quirk” that prevents couples who moved to D.C. from another jurisdiction from terminating their partnerships unless they reestablish residency in the state in which the partnership was originally registered.
According to a legislative report prepared by the Council’s Judiciary Committee, under the existing law couples may only terminate their partnerships using an administrative process at the D.C. Department of Health. The DOH has been in charge of registering and terminating domestic partnerships since the Council first passed the D.C. domestic partnership law in 1992.
Although the DOH has granted terminations of domestic partnerships to couples whose partnerships were registered in other jurisdictions, some of those jurisdictions do not recognize the terminations through an administrative process, saying such a process doesn’t carry the same weight as a judicial decree issued by a judge in a court of law.
The Council report says that since 2002, the DOH has registered 2,592 domestic partnerships and terminated 220.
“Registrations are almost evenly split between opposite-gender and same-gender partnerships,” the report says. “Of late, however, male/female-identified registrations comprise nearly 75 percent of all registrations,” it says, adding that so far in 2015 no partnerships were terminated and only two terminations were recorded in 2014.
LGBT activists have said that domestic partnerships became less popular among same-sex couples in D.C. since the city began legally recognizing same-sex marriage in 2010.
A second and final vote on the Domestic Partnership Termination Recognition Amendment Act has been scheduled for the Council’s next legislative session on Dec. 1.
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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