Jim Graham. (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)

A Ward 5 civic activist and supporter of former Mayor Adrian Fenty has filed papers with the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics to begin the process of seeking a recall election to oust Mayor Vincent Gray and Council Chair Kwame Brown, both Democrats, from office.

The activist, Frederick Butler, says he also plans to file papers seeking a recall election against gay D.C. Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1) and Council member Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3).

Butler has said each of the four elected officials were responsible for encouraging or failing to take steps to prevent corruption in government. He said Graham should be held responsible for the arrest in 2009 and guilty plea last year of his former chief of staff, Ted Loza, for accepting a “gratuity” from a taxicab industry official seeking to influence taxi related legislation then pending before the Council.

Federal authorities that investigated Loza said Graham was not implicated in the alleged corruption scheme. Last June, a federal judge sentenced Loza to eight months in prison.

Graham could not be immediately reached for comment.

Most political observers say Butler lacks the financial resources and support for the difficult task of obtaining 45,000 petition signatures within the next 180 days to place a recall election for Gray and Brown on the ballot in the November election. He would need signatures from 10 percent of the registered voters in Wards 1 and 3 to place Graham and Cheh on the ballot for a recall election in November. Observers note that attempts have been made to recall every previous mayor accept Walter Washington and all of them failed to obtain the signatures needed to place a recall on the ballot.

Butler is a friend and protégé of Fenty’s controversial supporter and college fraternity brother Sinclair Skinner, who came under investigation by the City Council after his company, Liberty Engineering and Design, received city contracts under the Fenty administration that critics said were due to cronyism.

Skinner came under fire from gay activists during one of Graham’s re-election campaigns when news surfaced that he distributed anti-gay fliers attacking Graham on behalf of one of Graham’s opponents in the Democratic primary.

Local gay activists Rick Rosendall and Peter Rosenstein, who backed Gray for mayor in the 2010 election, said they see no interest within the LGBT community for recalling Gray, Brown, Graham, or Cheh. Gay Democratic activist John Fanning, who supported Fenty in the 2010 mayoral election, said he, too, has no interest in seeing the four officials subjected to recall.

“I won’t sign the petition,” said Fanning. “My feeling is why don’t we wait until the next regular election and let the voters decide then.”

Bishop Harry R. Jackson linked same-sex marriage to perversion, corruption and pollution. (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)

Bishop Harry R. Jackson, the Maryland minister who led efforts to oppose D.C.’s same-sex marriage law in 2009, jumped head first into the marriage fray in Maryland last week when he delivered a fire and brimstone speech linking gay marriage to “perversion,” “corruption,” and “pollution.”

Jackson spoke out against the same-sex marriage bill pending before the Maryland Legislature at a Jan. 3 spiritual rally organized by the anti-gay Family Research Council at D.C.’s Chevy Chase Baptist Church, which is located on the D.C.-Maryland line.

Jackson’s remarks came just over a week before Maryland Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller (D) reiterated on Wednesday his opposition to the same-sex marriage bill in an interview on a local radio show, calling the legislation “an attack on traditional families.”

Miller also reiterated his long-held position of allowing the bill to come up for a vote even though he personally plans to vote against it.

“I don’t want to sound like one of the Republican candidates for president,” he said on the Marc Steiner Show, “but I am what I am.” He said he would vote against the bill while allowing it to come up for a vote on the Senate floor, where he predicted it would pass as it did in a similar vote last year.

LGBT rights groups responded to Miller’s remarks on Thursday.

“Democrat Maryland Senate President Mike Miller is trying to divert attention  away from his anti-gay pandering by hiding behind certain conservative candidates, but the truth is he is badly out of step with Marylanders, including Republican State Senator Allan Kittleman, who voted in favor of marriage equality last year and continues to be a champion on this issue,” said R. Clarke Cooper, executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans in a statement. “Miller’s disrespect for LGBT Maryland families is backwards, and Democrats should hold him accountable for it.”

The National Stonewall Democrats accused Miller of perpetuating GOP myths “claiming equal access to marriage is an attack on ‘traditional families’ and that religious institutions have been forced ‘out of business’ in other states.”

House Speaker Michael Busch (D) this week called the bill an important civil rights measure. But he said supporters will have to persuade “about 10 people that last year wanted more information on the initiative” to vote for it this year.  Busch also made his remarks on the Steiner radio show.

Busch said he has not seen any negative effects from D.C.’s same-sex marriage law in either D.C. or in Maryland, where state Attorney General Douglas Gansler said D.C. same-sex marriages could be recognized under state law.

While Jackson appeared poised to be the most visible figure opposing the Maryland marriage bill, political observers said a group called Maryland for Marriage was expected to take the lead in lobbying the legislature to kill the bill.

Most political observers believe Maryland for Marriage is an arm of the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage (NOM). As of this week, its website had not been updated since last summer, when its operators posted several commentaries praising the legislature for “killing” the Maryland marriage bill.

The one updated feature on the site this week was a pop-up box urging its supporters to fill out a form with their contact information to help efforts to defeat the bill this year. The box also offers to send supporters contact information about their elected officials in the state.

NOM executive director Brian Brown was not available for comment on the Maryland bill this week, according to NOM publicist Elizabeth Ray.

Ray said Maryland for Marriage official Derek McCoy would be handling inquires about the Maryland marriage bill. McCoy did not return a call this week seeking comment.

Kevin Nix, spokesperson for Marylanders for Marriage Equality, the coalition leading efforts in support of the marriage bill, said the coalition would be monitoring actions by the opposition groups.

“We’re expecting the usual negative attacks and vilification of committed, loving couples and their families,” he said. “It’s par for the course.”

Jackson, a longtime Montgomery County resident who said he moved to D.C. in 2009 to lead the opposition to the D.C. marriage bill, is senior pastor of the Beltsville, Md.-based Hope Christian Church.

The church website shows that Sunday services are held at the Beltsville church as well as at the E Street Cinema located 555 11th St., N.W. in D.C.

It could not be immediately determined whether Jackson currently lists his home in Montgomery County as his legal address. In 2009, Jackson announced he had moved into D.C., where he registered to vote, to enable him to file petitions to hold a voter referendum seeking to overturn the same-sex marriage law passed by the D.C. Council and signed by then-Mayor Adrian Fenty.

The city’s Board of Elections and Ethics later ruled that a referendum could not be held on the marriage bill because, if approved, it would violate the D.C. Human Rights Act that bans discrimination based on sexual orientation. Subsequent court rulings upheld the election board decision.

In his Jan. 3 sermon-like speech at Chevy Chase Baptist Church, Jackson lapsed into speaking in tongue, prompting the audience to shout and cheer.

Jackson cited a fundamentalist Christian belief that the devil had sent a figure he referred to as the Queen of Heaven to the D.C. area to create harm. He linked the Maryland marriage equality bill to harm that could be in store for the state.

“The power of the Queen of Heaven bring a malady over this region and has created perversion, pollution,” he said. “In the House of God, we declare that the Queen of Heaven has no authority over Maryland. Jesus is lord in Maryland.”

In his role as president and CEO of the National Association of People with AIDS, Frank Oldham Jr. is upfront about where he stands on the AIDS epidemic.

He’s a 63-year-old gay man who has lived with HIV for more than 20 years. He has dedicated much of his career to fighting AIDS, both in the private sector and as a high-level official in city AIDS agencies in New York, Chicago and D.C. He served from 1993-1994 as chief of D.C.’s Agency for HIV/AIDS.

His driving ambition is to help bring about the eradication of AIDS for everyone, with a short-term goal of lowering the HIV infection rate in the United States over the next several years.

But Oldham says his efforts in organizing a series of D.C.-based events next week for the NAPWA-sponsored National Gay Men’s HIV/AIDS Awareness Day on Sept. 27 brings an often overlooked fact into clear view: Gay men account for more than 50 percent of the people with HIV in the United States and represent the only group at risk for HIV in the country that still has increasing numbers of new infections each year.

In an interview this week, Oldham presented the Blade with two fliers NAPWA is using to promote National Gay Men’s HIV/AIDS Awareness Day. Both feature photos of attractive, bare-chested young men, one black and one white.

“We’re doing something very interesting here and I think very bold,” Oldham says. “We have these pictures as part of the branding to capture gay male culture. Gay male culture is sexually celebrative. It is true that we like good-looking people, sexual people and sex is a healthy activity.”

According to Oldham, societal taboos against sex and homosexuality have always had a negative impact on gay men but that impact was heightened many times over as the AIDS epidemic struck the gay male community in the 1980s.

Among other things, Oldham says societal prejudice and homophobia “poisoned” the atmosphere for many gay men who, lacking information and encouragement now offered by AIDS advocacy groups, led to self-destructive behavior that contributed to the spread of HIV.

“I think that because society is so sex negative our gay male culture is always in collision with that society,” he says. “And I’m a product of this society so I also sometimes run into these kinds of challenges and conflicts,” Oldham says.

“But gay male culture, by the parties we have, the circuit parties, the bathhouses – all of that is part of a beautiful, gay male culture. And it is something that has to be embraced and especially embraced if you’re going to deal with the AIDS epidemic.”

Oldham was asked how he reconciles those views with advice by many AIDS experts that one means of curtailing HIV infection is sexual monogamy or the reduction of the number of sex partners. He says the best advice other experts give is to behave responsibly and respectfully and to use the best-known methods to prevent the spread of the virus.

“Just because there is a virus, which is chemical, which is scientific, doesn’t mean that the culture is bad,” he says. “You tell people that if you happen to be monogamous, that’s fine. If you happen to have 10 partners a week, fine. But you have to be safe. You have to use condoms.”

If you are HIV positive, Oldham says, “you have to take medication and be adherent so that you have a zero viral load and are less likely to infect someone because you love your culture. So this is all a positive thing. I love my culture so I will take care of it. I don’t want to infect anybody. I want people to be safe and healthy and beautiful.”

Since becoming head of NAPWA in 2006, Oldham says he and his colleagues at the Silver Spring, Md., based organization have carried out a series of programs to promote HIV prevention, treatment and testing, with many of those programs aimed at gay men.

Like other AIDS advocacy groups, NAPWA has emerged as a strong promoter of HIV testing for gay men, representing a clear break from past views by some LGBT and AIDS advocacy groups that opposed widespread HIV testing on grounds that it could lead to discrimination against those identified as HIV positive.

Oldham and other AIDS activists have expressed confidence that in the D.C. area, particularly in D.C., strong protections are in place to ensure full confidentiality in HIV test results and strong protection against HIV discrimination.

Under a policy started by Mayor Adrian Fenty and continued by Mayor Vincent Gray, D.C. offers “treatment on demand” for anyone testing HIV positive, regardless of their ability to pay for the treatment.

Oldham says the National Gay Men’s HIV/AIDS Awareness Day events and activities, which begin on Sunday and culminate with a rally in Dupont Circle on Tuesday, stress the need for more aggressive public education and media coverage of the continuing risk of HIV infection among gay men or “men who have sex with men,” the term used in government studies on infection rates.

The “awareness day” events include a “Red Ribbon VIP Reception” and fundraiser at 6 p.m. Sunday at Town nightclub; an all-day conference on Monday on gay men and HIV to include nationally recognized experts on subjects ranging from homophobia to internal medicine, to be held at the Human Rights Campaign headquarters; a noon press conference on Tuesday outside the John A. Wilson Building, where Mayor Vincent Gray and other officials will recognize National Gay Men’s HIV/AIDS Awareness Day; and a “Red Flash Mob” rally in Dupont Circle at 5 p.m. Tuesday to commemorate the day and release red balloons “in hope and remembrance of those we have lost.”

A full list of events can be obtained at napwa.org.

Under Police Chief Cathy Lanier, the city’s award-winning GLLU has been effectively dismantled. (Blade file photo)

I continue to have a good relationship and like Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy Lanier on a personal level, but there is a growing rift between Lanier and the LGBT community. This is in stark contrast to the community’s strong relationship with former Chief Ramsey. The relationship with Lanier was good after her appointment but has since gone steadily downhill.

In December 2006 Mayor-elect Fenty named Lanier as his police chief. She quickly held a small but important getting-to-know-you meeting with a diverse group representing the LGBT community arranged by Lt. Brett Parson, then head of the Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit (GLLU). This award-winning unit was the pride and joy of our community and an example Chief Ramsey often used when talking about good community policing.

Chief Lanier spoke highly of the unit and committed to keeping it at full strength, a campaign promise made by candidate Fenty. Barely four months later there were rumblings about her lack of support for the unit and liaison units as a whole. In May 2007 Lanier issued a statement that she was going to begin changing, and in essence dismantling, the units. There was an outcry from the LGBT and the Latino communities and opposition to the changes from the D.C. Council forced the chief to back down. There was a stormy meeting at MPD headquarters with the chief. In exchange for her saying it was a “rookie mistake,” the community issued a statement of continued support for her.

It seems possible — though I hope not the case — that Chief Lanier’s moves against the liaison units since that time, and her lack of communication, have been partly a response to the community having called her out on the issue and winning. In October 2009, the chief again announced a broad change in the GLLU structure without any consultation with the community. She claimed it had been in the works for a year. Unfortunately by then, Mayor Fenty had also abandoned his pledge to the community. The chief announced there would be trained members of the GLLU in every precinct who understood and could deal with the issues impacting the LGBT community.

The community responded and correctly stated that there had been no training and was then grudgingly allowed minimal input into the proposed training modules. By that time, the core unit of the GLLU was understaffed, without resources to respond to the community, and without a sergeant.

Since then there have been continued battles with the chief over the structure of the unit and Lanier has continued to make changes without consulting the community, resulting in a clear diminishment of service to the community. Training of the new officers who are nominally part of the unit has been sporadic and until recently the community never received an accurate list of who these officers were.

In the interim there has been a documented rise in hate crimes in the District with an overwhelming impact on the LGBT community, ranging from name calling, robbery and assault, to murder. There has been a Council resolution on hate crimes and two hearings held by Council member Phil Mendelson.

At both those hearings, Chief Lanier has either downplayed the issue or told outright untruths about hate crime reporting. Recently, Lanier made another change to the leadership of the liaison units and now they report to a civilian in the department. She made no effort to discuss this and its possible impact with any community and didn’t bother to inform the mayor who confirmed this at a town hall meeting with the LGBT community in June.

The recent attack on five lesbians in Columbia Heights and the fact that the officers responding let a perpetrator go and didn’t file a report on the incident highlight what the community has been saying for years. Although the chief’s concept of a GLLU spread out across the District is a nice idea conceptually, the MPD isn’t ready to effectively implement that. The community needs and demands a fully staffed and functioning core GLLU.

I understand and applaud the overall success that the MPD has had in fighting crime. But in our community hate crimes are a major issue and they getting worse. The chief and the mayor, who as a candidate made a commitment to fully staff the GLLU, must work this out and abide by that commitment. Nothing less than our lives are at stake.

Disappointing is the word I use to describe the first months of the Gray administration. I recognize that some good things have happened. The mayor has appointed excellent deputy mayors, announced Kaya Henderson as D.C. Public Schools Chancellor, formed a new high level HIV/AIDS Commission and is moving forward on a slew of initiatives.

But all this is overshadowed by the unproven allegations of a losing minor mayoral candidate. What Gray has called missteps I consider accepting bad advice from erstwhile “friends.” I am not surprised, nor should he be, by how quickly some are willing to declare a “crisis” in government. But the “missteps” of giving jobs to employees’ children and raising salaries for some in his administration have only given ammunition to those that want to see a crisis.

Petula Dvorak in the Washington Post said, “tempting as it may be, this is not the time to buy that Fenty bumper sticker or get all nostalgic about the former mayor’s cute little Smart Car. Remember, Fenty had a Lincoln Navigator, too, and it was fully loaded with its own scandals. Maybe Gray is just front-loading his debacles, getting his screw-up’s out of the way in his first 100 days and moving on.” Consider also as some wax nostalgic that our former mayor has just gone on TV and endorsed the full substance and politics of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office must look at these allegations and do so quickly. If crimes occurred they need to be punished. Gray must shed some of the friends who appear more interested in their own gains than those of the city. We can’t be sidetracked from working on the crucial issues facing D.C. residents — moving forward on education reform, fighting HIV/AIDS and the right-sizing of our budget. Spending is out of whack and we have punted problems into the future instead of dealing with the reality of current revenue.

The city and the LGBT community need to move forward on a myriad of issues that require no new money but rather mayoral coordination. The director of the Mayor’s GLBT Office must work with GLOV on hate crimes, with the Rainbow Response Coalition on domestic violence, and with the MPD on strengthening the GLLU.

Gray has three years and 9 months to prove that he knows and can do better. Many voted for him understanding his commitment to balancing the budget in a way that will preserve the safety net for those most in need. They voted to continue education reform with community involvement and expect to see a steady improvement in our school system over the next four years. They voted for this mayor to work closely with Congress and our delegate for more independence and real home rule and to continue the improvement in city agency response to the public. They voted to treat both city employees and its residents with respect.

Ten weeks, and his first budget not submitted to the Council isn’t enough time to make judgments on where the city is headed. I understand some want to pounce all over the administration but when the Washington Post uses page one banner headlines to report unproven allegations the same weekend the first independent report on the takeover of the schools by the previous mayor appears below the fold in the Metro section, one must question motives. The Post writes an editorial criticizing Jack Evans for introducing a bill to politicize the school system and only mentions in the last line that the mayor has already said he would veto it.

Being in politics since the age of 12 and receiving my first “pay-off” for working in a campaign, getting to shake JFK’s hand in New York before the election, I know something about political patronage. I have absolutely no problem with patronage if those getting patronage jobs are qualified. After all, who should get first crack at jobs if not those who supported you? But everyone needs to be vetted and those who don’t meet the grade should be told with no uncertainty, no job!

But as the saying goes, let us not lose sight of the forest for the trees. We are facing difficult times at both the federal and the District level. Budgets will be cut and taxes and fees may be increased. Let’s keep our eyes on the big picture because that is what will impact our lives in the long run.

Clarence Fluker

Clarence Fluker, who served as the No. 2 person at the D.C. Office of GLBT Affairs under Mayor Adrian Fenty, may be under consideration to succeed Christopher Dyer as head of the office, according to a source familiar with the selection process.

Dyer left his post as director of the GLBT Affairs Office Dec. 30 after Mayor Vincent Gray informed him that he would appoint a new director of the office. The City Council created the office through legislation making it a cabinet-level agency in the city government.

Fluker said he remains in his post as the office’s program director. He declined to comment on whether he’s under consideration for the director’s position, saying all inquires about personnel matters must be directed to the mayor’s press office. A press spokesperson did not respond to an inquiry about the matter by press time.

Last month, sources familiar with Gray’s mayoral transition team said at least three others were believed to be under consideration for the director’s position at the GLBT Affairs Office. Among them were Jeffrey Richardson, president of the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club; Christopher Fitzgerald, head of Gray Pride, the LGBT arm of the Gray for mayor campaign last year; and Sterling Washington, former president of the D.C. Coalition of Black Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual & Transgender Men & Women.

Gray has not said when he plans to name the new director of the office.

Christopher Dyer (Blade photo by Michael Key)

In the three-and-a-half years that he served as director of the city’s Office of GLBT Affairs, Christopher Dyer said he never met with Mayor Adrian Fenty to discuss gay-related issues in a private, face-to-face meeting.

Yet Dyer, who left office Dec. 31 in the closing days of the Fenty administration, said he had constant access to Fenty through a mayoral chain of command that allowed him to weigh in on all matters relevant to the LGBT community.

“Obviously there are ways that we could have been better and done the job better,” Dyer told the Blade.

In his first media interview after no longer being bound by a Fenty policy that barred him from talking to the press, Dyer provided a glimpse into the inner workings of the city’s handling of LGBT issues.

He praised Fenty’s accomplishments on LGBT and other pressing city issues. But Dyer also acknowledged he was as baffled as other political observers over how a highly popular mayor who won a landslide victory in the 2006 election could lose his re-election bid four years later amid accusations of being aloof and arrogant.

“We could have communicated better and done the job better,” Dyer said. “In hindsight, we could have done a lot of things differently. But in the end, I completely and thoroughly supported the mayor and I never for a moment didn’t think I had the support of the mayor in trying to get things done.”

Dyer disputes claims by some gay activists that he had little or no access to Fenty and that Fenty paid little attention to his advice on LGBT issues.

“By the way we were structured, I reported directly to the chief of staff at one point and then directly to the director of the Office of Community Affairs,” he said.

“And so all the communication went up the chain of command and so I could make recommendations,” he said. “On an extreme occasion if I really needed to get the mayor’s attention I could send him an e-mail.”

In the nearly four years that he worked for Fenty, Dyer said there were only two occasions in which he felt he needed to directly communicate with the mayor.

“And I did,” he said.

One of the occasions involved the beating death of gay Maryland resident Tony Randolph Hunter, who died from injuries he received in an assault while walking to the then 9th Street, N.W. gay bar called BeBar.

LGBT activists, led the by local group Gays and Lesbians Opposing Violence (GLOV), viewed the incident as an anti-gay hate crime, even though police said they lacked sufficient evidence to list the assault as being bias related.

Following an outcry by activists that Fenty speak out forcefully on hate crimes and anti-gay violence, Dyer said he urged the mayor to attend a community meeting called by GLOV to discuss the Hunter case. Fenty didn’t attend the meeting; District Police Chief Cathy Lanier and two City Council members attended the event.

Dyer said Fenty was concerned about hate crimes and took steps to make sure Lanier and top police officials investigated such crimes.

“But I don’t know if him speaking out on hate crimes would have done anything to prevent them,” he said. “It certainly would have made people feel a whole lot better. But in the end, he didn’t. And there was really nothing much I could do about that.”

On the subject of same-sex marriage, Dyer noted that Fenty was the first mayoral candidate in 2006 to come out for it and pledge to sign a same-sex marriage bill. Yet during the period in 2009 when the City Council deliberated over a same-sex marriage equality bill introduced by gay Council member David Catania (I-At-Large), Fenty, while reiterating his promise to sign the bill, did not appear before the Council to testify at a hearing on the bill.

He also did not send anyone from his administration, including Dyer, to testify for the bill, a development that troubled some LGBT activists.

“He didn’t need to,” Dyer said, when asked why Fenty didn’t appear to testify on the marriage bill, noting that everyone knew at least 10 of the 13 Council members were expected to vote for it.

“When the mayor ran in 2006 every mayoral candidate had not taken a position on marriage,” Dyer said. “He was the first to say I’m going to sign it. He wrote an op-ed in the Blade saying he was going to sign it and support it and defend it. And as a result of his position every candidate who ran for mayor with the exception of Vincent Orange endorsed marriage equality. That’s significant.”

Dyer recounted the one LGBT-related issue in which he felt the Fenty administration committed a blunder and told how he clandestinely worked to reverse it.

At the request of officials in the D.C. Department of Corrections, the mayor’s office asked the director of the Office of Human Rights to propose a regulatory change that, if approved, would exempt prison officials from complying with the Human Rights Act’s ban on transgender discrimination in the city correctional system.

The proposal was based on concern by prison officials that complying with the Human Rights Act would require them to place male-to-female transgender women in prison sleeping quarters with other women. Transgender activists have long called for placing transgender women prisoners in women’s facilities to avoid harassment by male prisoners.

Dyer called the proposal “remarkably stupid” and said he argued against it when informed it was under consideration.

“I knew this was a bad idea and I didn’t want to deliberately tell anybody what we were doing,” he said, noting that he was bound by rules barring him from publicly opposing an administration policy.

“So I saw [gay activists] Bob Summersgill and Rick Rosendall at a [Gertrude Stein Democratic Club] meeting. And I walked up to them and said, ‘Hey Bob, Rick, take a look at the D.C. Register this week. You might find something interesting.’”

Dyer’s tip to the two activists alerted them to the proposal’s official announcement in the D.C. Register, prompting them to issue an alert to the LGBT community that the mayor’s office was proposing a curtailment of the non-discrimination protections for the transgender community.

The alert triggered a firestorm of opposition to the proposal from the LGBT community and other progressive groups. A short time later, the mayor’s office dropped the proposal.

Dyer said the only other action that drew his concern occurred in 2007, shortly after Fenty took office. Fenty promised the LGBT community during his 2006 election campaign that he would release a memo written by former D.C. Attorney General Robert Spagnoletti under Mayor Anthony Williams. The memo addressed the question of whether D.C. could legally recognize same-sex marriages from other states or countries under the city’s existing marriage law.

Sources familiar with the Williams administration said Spagnoletti concluded in his memo that the city could recognize those marriages. Williams chose not to release the memo, expressing fear that it would prompt the then GOP-controlled Congress to pass legislation banning the city from recognizing same-sex marriages.

According to Dyer, Fenty chose not to release the memo, but for a different reason. He was in the process of pushing through his plan to take over the city’s public school system and worried that any controversial action such as a same-sex marriage recognition memo would anger some members of Congress, who might retaliate and block the Fenty school proposal, which required congressional approval.

Despite the few issues where he disagreed with Fenty’s actions, Dyer said the mayor’s administration was overwhelmingly supportive of the LGBT community.

Following is a partial transcript of the Blade’s exclusive interview with Christopher Dyer, former director of the D.C. Office of GLBT Affairs.

Washington Blade: Can you tell a little about what you did before you became director of the Office of GLBT Affairs, both career wise and in Mayor Fenty’s first election campaign?

Dyer: I was the manager of member services for the Congress of Lung Association’s staff, which is the professional development association for the staff of the American Lung Association. Someone had suggested — the late Larry Stansbury — that if I ever wanted a job in a political administration like Wanda’s job that I needed to volunteer for a campaign. And so when I noticed Mayor Fenty beginning to wander around the high heel race two years ago – two years before he ran – I thought “ah ha.” And so I got involved in his campaign. And it turned out that I really, really liked him. I don’t think I could have genuinely supported anyone who I didn’t like. I was immediately attracted to his energy, his excitement, his joie de vivre. And I thought that he would be a welcome change, a welcome addition to moving the city — continuing what Mayor Williams did but with more energy.

Washington Blade: Can you tell about the selection process that landed you in the job?

Dyer: Well, I knew all of his staff from the campaign. Tene Dolphin, who was the chief of staff and who was my direct supervisor, knew me from the campaign. The mayor knew me from knocking on doors and being involved in the campaign. So I got a call on Feb. 5 on a Friday night saying, ‘Chris, the mayor wants you to come in has the interim director. We’re going to do a search for the permanent director, but he wants you to be the interim.’ And so I said sure, why not? I’ll go in as interim director. That lasted for about six months. Now that was interesting to me because a lot of people came up to me and said do you know that other people are trying to lobby for the job. And I’m like, really? O.K. That’s nice. I don’t know if it hurt or hindered me but it didn’t affect me to the extent that I lost my staff member in May. I had inherited a program manager who had been working for Darlene [Nipper]. And when she resigned in May I was left alone in the office for four months until I was finally named permanent director and I could hire Clarence in December. And that was a little bit interesting. But I got the permanent job in September and I served until December 30 [2010].

Washington Blade: Was there a time that the mayor talked to you directly about hiring you for the job?

Dyer: He called me and said Chris, would you do the job? And I said sure. But it’s important to understand — I would see the mayor once a month at cabinet meetings and we’d exchange pleasantries. He did consult with me a couple of times on the location of where the marriage ceremony was—where the marriage bill signing was. But the way that we were structured, I reported directly to the chief of staff at one point and then I reported directly to the director of community affairs and so all the communication went up the chain of command. And so I would make recommendations. On an extreme occasion if I really needed to get the mayor’s attention I could send him an e-mail. But we really tried to respect the standard chain of command.

Washington Blade: At the beginning who were those people in the chain of command?

Dyer: I worked for Tene Dolphin. And then they hired Carla Brailey. She was director of [the Office of] Community Affairs. And then she left and there had been a transition and I reported directly to Carrie Kohns. She was the next chief of staff. And then Sara Latterner was the director of community affairs and my final boss. She was awesome.

Washington Blade: Some people, including critics of the mayor, have said you had no real access to the mayor.

Dyer: If I needed to, I could have had direct access to the mayor at any point. But I was very trusting of the fact that I knew that every single thing that went up the chain of command—almost every major decision that had to happen in the GLBT Office was directly approved by the mayor. Almost every single piece that we wrote wasn’t. But like the strategy for marriage — obviously the mayor was directly involved in all that because he was getting feedback from Peter Nickles and Carrie and Sara and Tene’s senior staff. And my opinion was also being forwarded through all of this. So even though I didn’t have any five to 10 minute meeting with the mayor – I don’t know what I could have done in a five to 10 minute meeting with the mayor that I couldn’t get done the way I did it. It wasn’t that he didn’t care. And obviously I would also see him at the constituent community events that we would go to. And I don’t think there was ever a case – there are only two cases in the four years that I worked for him that I thought that I needed to directly communicate with him. And I did.

Washington Blade: What were they?

Dyer: There was trying to get him to attend the hate crimes — the guy that died. I can’t think of his name.

Washington Blade: Do you mean the incident near BeBar?

Dyer: Yeah.

Washington Blade: Tony—

Dyer: Tony Hunter — the Tony Hunter case. I suggested he attend that [GLOV meeting to discuss anti-gay attacks, including Hunter case]. And then I think I needed his permission to get, to involve someone at the Frank Kameny bill signing and speak at the Frank Kameny press conference — the street-naming press conference. So it was interesting. I did hear the criticism that I needed more direct access. But on the other hand, by not having a direct report to the mayor I had a lot more freedom to actually do stuff. The mayor had a general vision of – I don’t know if it’s a copout – the mayor’s idea of running GLBT policy was to hire me and to pretty much let me do what I needed to do. So that’s where it was.

Washington Blade: There was criticism that the mayor was not vocal enough in response to the growing number of anti-LGBT hate crimes.

Dyer: I think personally it would have been nice if the mayor had spoken out just to reassure people that yes, the MPD is actually doing its job. In private, for example, I remember when Brett [Parson] was reporting the incident directly to him about the guy getting bashed in the head with a wine bottle on the C&O Canal towpath. The mayor said, God that sounds horrible. I don’t think the mayor didn’t think that hate crimes were important. I think that in the context of – I don’t know. I think that in context, all crimes are horrible. It would have been neat if he had talked about it. But I don’t know if him speaking out on hate crimes would have done anything to prevent them. It certainly would have made people feel a whole lot better. But in the end, he didn’t. And there was really nothing much I could do about that.

Dyer wears a Gray sticker in public after Fenty lost the primary. (Blade file photo by Michael Key)

Washington Blade: How did Brett tell the mayor about this directly?

Dyer: Because Brett and I ran into the mayor at the AIDS Walk. It was one of those great things. We were at AIDS Walk. The mayor was doing AIDS Walk. I was staffing the mayor and Brett was at AIDS Walk. So Brett talked to the mayor directly about what had happened. The mayor said he heard there was a crime last night because Peter Rosenstein was bugging the mayor about it. And so the mayor asked Brett what happened because Brett was running the Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit at the time. So in private the mayor was very compassionate. I wish that compassion could have shown but for whatever reason it didn’t.

Washington Blade: Was there a time when you began to realize that the mayor was alienating a lot of people, including people in the LGBT community?

Dyer: I really don’t understand it. It’s a mystery to me. I don’t know if there was a conscious decision on his part or not whether to be accessible. But he was constantly accessible to every community event and every community meeting that he would attend. Whenever he would be out there people would be nice – except starting in 2009 and 2010. At the 2009 high heel race — last year’s high heel race — people were booing him. It was after he fired the teachers. I think the whole thing about him being indifferent is – I think more in the arrogance charge that might be true. But I think that’s really more sort of a code for why people wouldn’t vote for him – that they didn’t like the fact that he let go teachers, the fact that we fired 1,500 or 2,000 government employees and that had a direct effect. I also got the sense from talking to people on the campaign trail that some voters had this expectation that he would be more like Marion Barry meaning more of a man of the people. And he simply wasn’t. And I don’t know what had happened. But to answer your question, did I have a sense that things were going south — well obviously when I read the Post poll in January 2009 that showed him with 42 percent approval I began to think there might be trouble.

Washington Blade: Did that come as a shock to some in the administration?

Dyer: It came as a surprise to me. I wasn’t involved directly in the campaign brain trust. But I do know that it came to a surprise to a lot of people. It was interesting to me that they finally understood and finally captured that people were pretty upset at him after he lost the Ward 4 straw poll because there was a definite shift in his tone. Toward the end of the campaign he began to sound more apologetic. And of course by then it was too late. But it was an interesting thing. We really were aggressive as an administration. We did a lot of things that probably alienated a lot of voters and took on vested interests and I think that in the end, coupled with his arrogance, or perceived arrogance, was the undoing of him.

Washington Blade: On the other side of the equation, do you think overall he was helpful to the city and the LGBT community?

Dyer: This mayor has done more for LGBT issues than any other mayors combined — period. I mean obviously, by signing the marriage bill — he did that. But also, by letting our office run with stuff we did more – I don’t want to claim that we did more for LGBT people than any other administration. But we had a pretty strong marker. In addition to signing the marriage bill, we started the Wanda Alston House. People had been asking for LGBT housing. When I started at the job there was a list of things from the summit — the LGBT citizens summit — that had been recommended. And we got LGBT housing taken care of for youth. For years people wanted an LGBT health report done. We delivered on that. We got an LGB health report. We didn’t have transgender data. We delivered on that. People wanted us to train Fire and EMS and MPD [the Department of Fire and Emergency Medical Services and the police department]. We did a comprehensive training at Fire and EMS. We started and developed a partnership with community groups to start doing a quarterly, an intense training of MPD officers. We trained 10,000 government employees. So we did a lot of good.

Now whether it was the mayor himself sitting there and saying, “Chris, I want you to specifically train these 10,000 people” — no that never happened. But he hired me and he hired people like [Schools Chancellor] Michelle Rhee and [Police] Chief [Cathy] Lanier and cabinet members who got things done. And for the city, I think the most fundamental thing that will really be the most transformative in the end is not only the fact that we had so many construction projects going on  — we essentially saved the construction industry for about a year by doing all the renovations of schools and parks and rec centers. We started school reform again. That’s going to have a long-term effect. But I think we also downsized government by two or three thousand positions, which in the end will be putting us in much better financial shape moving forward. So there are a lot of examples of things that people don’t obviously see. And in the end, I think we’ll be viewed as a very transformational administration.

It was interesting when we were campaigning in 2006 a lot of people in Wards 2 and 3 were concerned that Fenty would turn into another Marion Barry. In the end, those same voters were concerned that Gray was going to take that spot. I think Fenty surprised a heck of a lot of people when he turned out to govern more like Williams than people ever thought he would — but with a lot more energy.

Washington Blade: When you say the mayor started the Wanda Alston House, isn’t that a project of Transgender Health Empowerment?

Dyer: We funded it. We didn’t start it. Let me make that very clear. We funded it.

Washington Blade: It was created by THE.

Dyer: It was actually created by Brian Watson [THE’s director of programs]. Let’s be clear. Brian had the idea. Brian started lobbying us intensely. And this is a good example of how to actually work with government.

Washington Blade: How much did the city allocate for the Alston House funding?

Dyer: What the city does is it appropriates a certain amount of money to the Community Partnership to End Homelessness. And the Community Partnership then does all the distribution, does a significant distribution of funds for homeless services in this city. And they get as contract from the city. So I don’t know what our final thing is. I think it’s around a quarter of a million. But you’ll have to ask Brian what he gets from the city.

… The other thing we did in addition to Wanda Alston is we worked with the Department of Human Services to update their shelter inspection guidelines so that when you go to inspect a shelter people know how to be in compliance with the new gender identity laws. We did a series of trainings with THE’s frontline staff on how to interact with transgender residents and LGBT residents. So there’s a lot of other work that got done. We also finally, in the last, toward the last [part of the administration] we published a tip sheet for shelter providers on how to properly house and interact and take care of LGBT residents.

Washington Blade: Can you summarize the most important accomplishments the administration did on LGBT issues?

Dyer: Well obviously signing marriage — signing the marriage bill was huge.

Washington Blade: On that issue, critics like Lane Hudson said the mayor didn’t do anything to advance the bill in the City Council other than say he would sign it. Did he do any lobbying for it?

Dyer: He didn’t need to. Here’s the interesting thing. When the mayor ran in 2006 every major mayoral candidate had not taken a position on marriage. He was the first to say I’m going to sign it. He wrote an op-ed in the Blade saying he was going to sign it and support it and defend it. As a result of his position, every candidate who ran for mayor with the exception of Vincent Orange endorsed marriage equality. And that’s significant.

Washington Blade: Didn’t Linda Cropp hesitate on the issue?

Dyer: Yeah, but Linda Cropp moved on it. So by endorsing it, by saying he was going to sign it, he moved the discussion. You know, did the mayor ask Chairman Gray to drop [introduce] the marriage bill? No. Would Chairman Gray have agreed to it if he said [introduce] the marriage bill? No. But did he help Catania? Did he stop Catania? No. Did he stop Mendelson? No, he couldn’t. The Council very wisely did what the Council was supposed to do and they passed the marriage bill. And he signed it promptly. And he’s aggressively and vigorously defended the marriage bill [against attacks] by the National Organization for Marriage [the lead national group opposing gay marriage]. And that’s what the executive branch does.

Washington Blade: Are you referring to city Attorney General Peter Nickles’ court filings defending the marriage law?

Dyer: Yeah. That’s the role of the mayor. We would get criticized for not attending every LGBT event. I think it’s nice to have direct interaction with the mayor but it’s impractical for the mayor to attend thousands of events every year.

Washington Blade: But did you tell the mayor he would have done better with LGBT community if he attended a few more of these events?

Dyer: I didn’t think it was appropriate to tell him he should attend more events. I recommended the events he should attend but it was – if he decided not to attend, you didn’t argue with him. In some ways he did have a sense of – it was clear to me that he did have a sense of what he needed to do to take care of the LGBT community. And for the most part, he did. But some people obviously wanted him to attend more events.

Washington Blade: So then it was you who attended all these events?

Dyer: Yes. And to be honest, I think that’s the role of what the director of the Mayor’s Office of GLBT Affairs should be doing. And that’s also the mayor’s legacy. I was at almost every LGBT event. But the mayor had a staff person at every community event that ever happened in the city. We had the Mayor’s Office Community Relations and Services that would attend tons of community events a day and would do great fixes across the city and get things fixed that had not been fixed before. And the city looks a lot cleaner than it has because we literally have people going and having to take photos of projects they worked on and sit with the mayor every week to review their progress in cleaning up the ward.

Washington Blade: So did these people who went to the meetings report back to the mayor?

Dyer: They reported back to the agencies. They didn’t report directly to the mayor.

Washington Blade: Can you tell a little about the cabinet meetings with the mayor? About how many attended those meetings?

Dyer: About 50.

Washington Blade: Where were those meetings held?

Dyer: They were held all throughout the city. The mayor made a point of having a cabinet meeting in each ward. Once we went to a rec center in Ward 5 that had sort of been rundown. And he pointed to where the rundown parts of the rec center were. At every cabinet meeting we would have a briefing on the budget on where we were in the city. If it were summer job season, we would have briefing from the director of the employment services. An occasional agency would have an opportunity to spotlight what they were working on … But the real advantage of those cabinet meetings for me was I got to lobby my fellow agency directors and follow up on projects we were working on … It was very convenient to be able to lobby 10 or 15 agency directors in a cabinet meeting helped me get a lot done.

Washington Blade: Were these meetings open to the public?

Dyer: No. I guess all meetings are open to the public, but they were never publicized.

Washington Blade: Did you use private rooms in these public places where the cabinet meetings were held?

Dyer: No, we had very public rooms. If it was a rec. center, there would be a meeting space where we’d meet. So I suppose anyone could wander in … One of the things that was quite fun – every late August we had a cabinet meeting right around the time for cleaning up the schools. The weekend before the schools were to open we’d have a cabinet meeting because there would also be this project of sprucing up the schools going on. So I got to paint—paint doors in public schools with the chief of police.

Washington Blade: Cabinet members did that?

Dyer: Yeah, we all did this. For one of our cabinet meetings we would go out and spruce up a school once a year.  At another cabinet meeting we distributed turkeys … So it was interesting that we had this perception that we were out of touch and yet we would do all these great things while being in touch with the community.

Washington Blade: Was there ever a time when the mayor went around the room asking the cabinet members to say anything?

Dyer: It would be impractical. There are 60 cabinet members.

Washington Blade: So each one didn’t report on what was going on with his or her agency at these meetings?

Dyer: No. That would take forever, it would take two hours. What the mayor would do is the way he would get feedback from the agency directors is he would go through the city administrator. Once a year he would have sort of a strategy meeting with each agency director and somehow we never got to be on the list to have that meeting. He didn’t make it through all 60 agencies. But the way the government is structured, most agency heads report directly to the city administrator. And then the city administrator reports directly to the mayor about what’s going on. And obviously if the event was important enough that there would be press involved, the mayor got a full briefing. And then the mayor would have a senior staff meeting every week.

Washington Blade: Just to be clear, in your entire tenure in office, did you ever have a sit-down meeting with the mayor?

Dyer: No, not a direct, face-to-face sit-down meeting with the mayor. I don’t know how Mayor Williams did it. But I don’t think that’s unusual. I think Wanda [Alston] had face-to-face meetings with Mayor Williams because she wanted to get this thing going. But I would come across paperwork where it was the same procedure. You have an idea. You report to your chief of staff or your director of community affairs. They run it up the chain of command. And then the mayor gets things done. One of the things I’ve observed in the last three and a half years that was quite interesting is I think there’s a slightly different perception in the community on how important our issues are in the cosmic scheme of running a complete city. I don’t mean that to be bad. I think our issues are very important. But when you’re mayor of a city you’re focusing on lots of things like fixing potholes, plowing streets, fighting crime, putting out fires. This idea or notion of trying to figure out a way to also give LGBT residents a different set of treatment – or not a different treatment but to be sensitive – the idea of how to be sensitive to LGBT residents – it doesn’t occur to people. It doesn’t occur to government agencies. And that’s why the job of LGBT director – one of my jobs was to remind agency directors — hey, there needs to be a slightly different approach here. We worked with the Department of Mental Health to improve their training and their cultural competency. Here’s a great example of things you don’t see in the paper. For years, SMYAL wanted to have a director of mental health services and they approached us to get—to see if there could be city funding hire a mental health counselor to work with SMYAL. Our Department of Mental Health is not structured to give direct grants to community organizations. So what we did is I went to the head of youth care or clinical care. And DMH said how can we get these core service agencies that are getting D.C. government funds into a training with LGBT youth providers … we set a meeting up. And as a result, SMYAL has set up three relationships with three core service providers. And now they have a place to refer their LGBT youth.  There’s a lot of work that needs to be done systemically to get everyone to be LGBT culturally competent. And we sort of did that strategically.

Washington Blade: Can you say now, having been inside the administration, what happened to prompt Dr. Shannon Hader to abruptly resign as head of the AIDS office?

Dyer: I really don’t know what happened. I sensed that there had been a conflict with her and the director of the Department of Health.

Washington Blade: Dr. Pierre Vigilance?

Dyer: Dr. Vigilance. I don’t know the details. But I think that’s what it had all come down to.

…With HIV and AIDS, the mayor did everything that the HIV/AIDS Administration suggested he do. The release of the study that showed MSM [men who have sex with men] behavior around HIV prevention – the fact that the mayor stood up at a press conference and released that really was a bit—in the end, I think it was probably more courageous than some of the members of his administration wanted it to be.

The other thing I learned is that no matter what the issue, our LGBT stuff was always treated as something to be sensitive about. There was a very deliberative approach to anything LGBT. And people were very cautious releasing anything about LGBT issues. We got the stuff done but there was a lot of back and forth on the [lesbian, gay & bisexual] health report about why we need to release a health report. There was a lot of back and forth on do you release this HIV study? There was a lot of back and forth on the marriage bill, on when do we sign the marriage bill. I don’t know if other agencies dealt with that level of caution, but to me it felt like we were very cautious on LGBT issues.

Washington Blade: Why do you think that was? Were they worried those issues were too controversial among some voters?

Dyer: I don’t know. It might have been that we were very deliberative on everything. There is still a lot of general lack of knowledge of LGBT issues among D.C. residents. We’re a pretty progressive city but there are parts of the city that just don’t understand our issues. I trained 10,000 government employees. Half of them didn’t even know the difference – that there’s a difference between gender identity and sexual orientation. And so I had to very deliberately in my training point out that it was a different entity. People have a general view of what transgender people were but they didn’t really understand what a transgender person went through. And so if there’s that basic level of lack of knowledge and it is not surprising that there would be a difficulty in getting people to suddenly release a tip sheet on how to provide adequate medical care to LGBT patients.

Washington Blade: Tell about how you did these trainings. Did you speak at an auditorium at government agencies?

Dyer: We would have a group of 25 to 50 employees and we would use a conference room at an agency. And we developed, with the Office of Human Rights, a two-hour training and use the Human Rights Act as a framework of providing the training. We would go through all of the provisions and we would have a very specific and intense training on sexual orientation and gender identity. That was about an hour. And there were a lot of good questions and answers. We trained 25 to 50 people at a time. So it would take us three to four weeks to go through an agency…I actually liked the session when people would flip out because you would have a teachable moment…when you talked about transgender residents using bathrooms, that was always enough to get a few people vexed. And you had to go through that conversation…One guy once asked me how does God’s law interact with the Human Rights Law? And after going back and forth I had to say I don’t think the District government follows God’s law in providing services. It was a very interesting conversation.

Washington Blade: When you said 10,000 people were trained, did you appear before them all during your time of service?

Dyer: The only group I didn’t appear before was Fire and EMS. They got a core of trainers to do that. And the Department of Corrections was done by Earlene Budd. But our office, yeah, we trained –- we did a lot of sessions.

Washington Blade: How did you approach your job in terms of reaching out to the community?

Dyer: Brett Parson, who was the head of the [police] Gay and Lesbian Liaison Unit, gave me the best advice. He said the reason that I was able to make the GLLU so successful is when I took over I went everywhere. And so I followed that. I went everywhere. I think it’s crazy not to be out among the people. I developed great relationships with leaders in the community because there wasn’t a lot our office could provide in terms of money. But we sure as heck could provide a proclamation or we could do a service of trying to navigate how to get the mayor at your event. That’s just good old-fashioned customer care.  Wanda [Alston, head of the GLBT Affairs Office under Mayor Anthony Williams] had done some of that and Darlene [Nipper, who succeeded Alston as head of the GLBT Affairs Office under Mayor Williams] had done some of that…In fiscal year 2007, before I took over, we had contact with 7,000 residents in that fiscal year. By last year, we had 28,000 indirect or direct contacts with LGBT residents. We quadrupled the scope of the outreach of the office.

Washington Blade: How do you keep track of that?

Dyer: First of all, web visits, web hits. I would track the unique hits on our web page. That’s one element.

Washington Blade: That’s not you personally meeting people.

Dyer: But that’s a direct access. That’s a direct interaction with our office. My rule of thumb was if we delivered the service, if we did the training – I would count that as a hit…

Washington Blade: Now that you’re out of office is there anything you can reveal that you weren’t able to before?

Dyer: The only interesting thing besides the bodies that we buried – I’m kidding. The only fascinating thing – and this goes to process – we campaigned on a promise of releasing the Spagnoletti memo [a legal memorandum written by former D.C. Attorney General Robert Spagnoletti during the Williams administration on whether existing city law allowed the city to recognize same-sex marriages from other states and countries]. The whole marriage issue was very fascinating to me on how it went down in the inside and outside game. The Spagnoletti memo was [prepared] under the previous administration and when we took over – we had campaigned that we were going to release this thing. So within a month of our taking over, what’s the question we kept getting? When are you going to release the Spagnoletti memo? The question was asked around the same time we were trying to get school reform passed – to get the power to take over the schools. There had to be an affirmative action by Congress to grant us the authority to take over the schools — to change the Home Rule Charter. And I think there was a deliberate effort on our part not to do anything remotely controversial to tick the Senate off or the Congress off that would possibly get them to block us from taking over the schools.

Washington Blade: When was this?

Dyer: It was right at the very beginning of the administration in February and March 2007 when we made the decision to take over the schools. I’m not going to suggest that the Spagnoletti memo was put in the pocket of someone but it’s clear that it wasn’t released. It was interesting because when we tried to take over the schools two U.S. senators put anonymous holds on the change in the Home Rule Charter. Ben Cardin did it because he wanted to get something resolved with our youth detention center. And another senator put an anonymous hold on it because the school board president, Robert Bobb, didn’t want to lose power. Mary Landrieu put a hold on the thing. But the holds were taken care of. I suspect that if the Spagnoletti memo had been released there might have been an opportunity for some conservative congressman or senator to put some mischief in releasing the bill to take over the schools.

Washington Blade: Isn’t it assumed by most people that the Spagnoletti memo said the city could legally recognize same-sex marriages from other jurisdictions?

Dyer: I haven’t seen the Spagnoletti memo myself but I’ve been told by people that the memo pretty much said we could recognize marriages [from other jurisdictions]. There was nothing in D.C. law that said we couldn’t do it.

Washington Blade: Ultimately the City Council passed legislation recognizing out-of-state same-sex marriages.

Dyer: Yes and the mayor signed it…

Washington Blade: Concerning the marriage bill itself, some activists criticized the mayor for not testifying in favor of it before the Council and not sending anyone from his administration to testify.

Dyer: I could have probably testified. This was a case of symbolism. It would have been nice to have someone from the mayor’s office testify at this thing. But in the end it wasn’t necessary. We passed the bill.

Washington Blade: Did you have the option of testifying if you wanted to?

Dyer: I could have. I suppose I could have really pushed to testify and they would have granted me the ability to testify in front of the Council. But this is the way the office was structured. We had a very deliberative communications strategy where there was one voice speaking for the entire administration and that was the mayor. It was very clear about that. Occasionally some of the agency directors would be able to engage with the media. But I’m part of the mayor’s staff so I’m not going to be running around talking a lot to the press.

Washington Blade: You weren’t allowed to.

Dyer: No. But I did do a couple of op-eds in the Blade. At times I thought it was important to just remind people that we’re actually doing things. Obviously some of the activists weren’t pleased with everything we did or what the mayor did. But in the end it didn’t prevent us from signing a marriage bill. It didn’t prevent us from getting the Wanda Alston House started. We released the health report. We provided [LGBT] training to 10,000 employees, created an economic development conference. Our office did serious deliberative work on economic development for the first time in the gay community. It didn’t stop us from working with the transgender community…

Here’s the other interesting tidbit. We did something remarkably stupid. I don’t want to use the word stupid, but we did something that I didn’t think was really smart. We tried to amend the Human Rights Act to give Corrections an opportunity to – not to amend the act. We were going to propose a new rulemaking that would give an exception to Corrections and we were also trying to get rid of — someone suggested that we eliminate the provision that allows unisex bathrooms. I was told that this was happening. The director of OHR asked me what I thought about this and I said that’s a really bad idea.

Washington Blade: Do you mean Gustavo Velasquez, director of the Office of Human Rights?

Dyer: Yeah, and I said this is a really bad idea, Gustavo. We proceeded with trying to release it. So what I did is I knew this was a bad idea and I didn’t want to deliberately tell anyone what we were doing. But I know we had posted the proposed rulemaking in the D.C. Register. So I saw Bob Summersgill and Rick Rosendall at a Stein meeting. And I walked up to them and said hey Bob, Rick, take a look at the D.C. Register this week. You might find something interesting. And of course the proposed rulemaking was there. I was checking my e-mail. I was at JR.’s at Show Tunes checking my e-mail and within three hours there was an action alert out and all hell broke loose in the community. It was impressive. I had never seen every local and national organization come together quite well like they did. So I was sitting there thinking to myself I only wished they had waited a day. Could they have at least given me a day?  But it was an interesting position because from an administration perspective I’m supposed to be defending what we’re trying to do publicly. But privately I’m like go guys—go, go, go.

Washington Blade: The mayor’s office dropped the proposal a short time later.

Dyer: Oh, almost immediately.  There was such an intense opposition that it was dropped. Peter Nickles [the D.C. attorney general under Fenty] got involved in it. We ended up developing a policy with the Department of Corrections that isn’t perfect but it’s better than what it was. [The policy allows male to female transgender women to be housed in female prison facilities rather than being placed in the male sleeping facilities.]

Washington Blade: But the issue never made it to a cabinet meeting?

Dyer: No, but it didn’t need to. That issue was dealt with appropriately. The activists set up a meeting with Gustavo [Velasquez] and the OHR staff. They aired their grievances at the staff meeting. They were going to air their grievances at the Human Rights Commission meeting and it would have been taken care of. And it did. It got taken care of.

Washington Blade: Is it a concern that Gustavo, as head of the Office of Human Rights, was going along with the proposal?

Dyer: He was asked to do it. I don’t know what Gustavo did or didn’t do. Someone ordered it. I don’t know whether the mayor ordered it or whether it came out of the city administrator’s office. It was a bad idea. It was probably one of only two times in the administration that I sat there consciously and I thought what are we doing?

Washington Blade: Did you communicate that to the mayor?

Dyer: No, I communicated it to my staff and I communicated it to the chief of staff. I said Carrie this is a horrible idea. I sent e-mails and I talked in person and said guys this is a horrible idea. So I assume that message was conveyed up the line.

…The other thing I did that I found fascinating is I started assisting the communication director in messaging in the way we talk to the LGBT community because we did sound cold originally on the response to hate crimes. I think we could have done a better job in showing our compassion because we were compassionate. But that’s just the strategy that was employed.

Washington Blade: On the Tony Hunter beating death case, the mayor did appear with the police chief at a news conference at the time an arrest was made.

Dyer: And that was the standard operating procedure. The mayor very rarely attended memorial services for victims of homicides. As a procedure, he very rarely attended. He would send staff and letters of condolence. That’s the thing that most people don’t appreciate. There was also an unofficial rule on the calculus the mayor made in attending events. For him, it was more important to talk directly to residents. He did talk to community leaders. But he really wanted events that he could be directly in touch with voters. So attending a ceremonial dinner for an out-of-town LGBT organization to personally greet attendees from out of town was not that important to him. He wanted to directly talk to D.C. voters so that kind of tension was interesting. So I personally counseled groups on how to fill out the event form to improve the chances of the mayor attending.

Washington Blade: Did he attend any events by national LGBT groups like an HRC dinner?

Dyer: No, none of the national groups. But his first year in office he did attend the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance award ceremony. He did attend the SMYAL brunch when he was mayor-elect. He did one presser with us when they released the HIV report. He did two bar openings at Mova because he knew Babek [Movahedi, the Mova owner]. He attended every high heel race and every Pride parade, which, by the way, Tony Williams only attended one Pride parade in his eight years…

Washington Blade: Some of the activists criticized the mayor for siding with Police Chief Cathy Lanier on what the activists say has been the dismantling of the police Gay & Lesbian Liaison Unit through its decentralization.

Dyer: That is the biggest myth that some activists have perpetuated because they don’t understand what’s going on. Basically what happened is there was a staffing issue with the GLLU and when Brett [Parson, former director of the GLLU] left the unit the chief decided that she wanted to try to expand the reach of the unit and have more affiliate GLLU officers. And she had a fundamental difference on how she wanted GLLU to operate. She wanted GLLU members in the police districts. She wanted the central [GLLU] office but she also wanted other officers out in each of the police districts…So it’s not true to say she dismantled the office but the perception was there among some that she did.

Washington Blade: What is your view on the state of the Office of GLBT Affairs as a new mayor takes office?

Dyer: One of my goals when I took the job was to take this office that was still relatively new and define what it did. We had a full administration to really run the office in a way that I think the founders of the office had envisioned. So I think we succeeded in really planting the idea that there is an Office of GLBT Affairs within the members of the community. And I also think we really did a good job in explaining what government does and really educating people on the services that government offers. And it was a lot of fun.

Washington Blade: From your perspective, again, now that you can speak freely, how did the mayor do on LGBT issues and could you have persuaded him to do more?

Dyer: Obviously there is ways that we could have been better and done the job better. We could have communicated better. In hindsight, we could have done a lot of things differently. But in the end, I completely and thoroughly supported the mayor and I never for a moment didn’t think I had the support of the mayor in trying to get things done. Everything I wanted to do we got done. It might not have been the way I had originally planned it. And everything the community had wanted us to do we managed to get done as well on GLBT issues. And that’s very important. There are some things we left on the table. I still think we need to improve our response to bullying. We need to improve our hate crimes stuff. We still need to figure out a way to increase HIV/AIDS education. We need to improve the awareness and delivery of LGBT health services. But we made enormous progress and I don’t think that it was for a lack of support by the mayor or his members of the cabinet. So that’s what I want to make very, very clear.

The year 2010 saw same-sex couples legally marry for the first time in D.C. Angelisa Young and Sinjhoyla Townsend were among the first to wed. (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)

#1 Same-sex couples marry in D.C.

A long line of same-sex couples snaked its way through a corridor at the D.C. Superior Court’s Marriage Bureau on March 3, the first day the couples could apply for a marriage license under the city’s Religious Freedom and Marriage Equality Amendment Act.

The Act was approved by the City Council and signed by Mayor Adrian Fenty in December 2009, making D.C. the sixth jurisdiction in the country to legalize same-sex marriage. The weddings began in March following the completion of a required congressional review of the law.

Under the watchful eye of nearly two-dozen television cameras and news photographers, two lesbian couples and a gay male couple were among the first same-sex couples to wed—in ceremonies held at the Human Rights Campaign headquarters.

“Today was like a dream for me,” said Angelisa Young, 47, minutes after her wedding to Sinjhoyla Townsend, 41, her partner of 12 years.

“I always felt like it would come true. But it’s here now, and it’s really real,” she said. “We want to thank everyone who made this possible.”

Opponents of same-sex marriage, led by Maryland minister Harry Jackson, lost a series of court challenges seeking to force the city to hold a voter referendum on whether the law should be overturned. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to decide in January whether accept or reject Jackson’s final appeal on the question of whether the city should be forced to hold the referendum.

#2 Fenty loses to Gray

Mayor Adrian Fenty lost his re-election bid to City Council chair Vincent Gray in the city’s Sept. 14 Democratic primary. Although the two candidates each have a strong record of support on LGBT issues, including support for the same-sex marriage law, Gray received the strong backing of most LGBT organizations and activists.

Like other constituency groups, a number of LGBT leaders said Fenty appeared to have lost touch with the needs and concerns of the LGBT community. They noted that he declined to speak out, for example, on the growing number of anti-LGBT hate crimes and rarely attended LGBT events or meetings.

But election returns showed that Fenty beat Gray in nearly all voter precincts where large numbers of gays live such as Dupont Circle, Adams Morgan, Logan Circle and Capitol Hill. Areas where high concentrations of black gays live voted overwhelmingly for Gray, highlighting the city-wide racial divide in the election, with blacks voting mostly for Gray and whites voting mostly for Fenty.

#3 Principal Brian Betts murdered

The murder in April of highly acclaimed D.C. middle school principal Brian Betts, who was gay, by a 19-year-old man he met though an Internet chat line for men interested in sex with men drew extensive media attention.

Three of the four youths charged in the case — three 19 and one 18 at the time of the incident — have pleaded guilty through plea bargain offers by prosecutors in Montgomery County, Md., where Betts was shot to death in his house on April 15. Nineteen-year-old Alante Saunders, who admitted he shot Betts accidentally during a robbery, was sentenced to 40 years in jail.

Saunders acknowledged to police that he hatched a plan to meet someone on the chat line for the purpose of robbing them, a disclosure that created alarm in the gay community over potential danger of meeting sex partners online.

Two attorneys representing Betts’ family have called on the U.S. Justice Department to investigate whether Saunders should be charged under the Matthew Shepard federal hate crimes law.

“Brian was a gay man and we believe an investigation should be opened under that law to determine whether a hate crime has or has not been committed,” said attorney Gloria Allred.

#4 Md. elects 7 out gays; Beyer loses race

Seven openly gay candidates – four incumbents and three newcomers – were elected to the Maryland Legislature in November, boosting chances that the legislature will pass a same-sex marriage law in 2011.

Meanwhile, Dana Beyer, a retired eye surgeon and political activist, lost her bid to become the first transgender person elected to the Maryland Legislature. Beyer ran for a seat in the House of Delegates from a district in Montgomery County.

Among the winners were gay incumbents Richard Madeleno, a member of the State Senate; and lesbian House of Delegates members Anne Kaiser, Heather Mizeur and Maggie McIntosh. Among the challengers to win was Mary Washington, who captured a seat in the House of Delegates from Baltimore, becoming the first black lesbian to be elected to the Maryland Legislature and just the second black lesbian to win a seat in a state legislature in the U.S.

Lesbian Bonnie Cullison and gay candidate Luke Clippinger each won seats in the House of Delegates. All seven are Democrats.

#5 Not guilty verdict in Wone case

Three gay men charged with obstruction of justice, conspiracy to obstruct justice, and evidence tampering in connection with the 2006 murder of D.C. attorney Robert Wone were found not guilty of the charges in June following a sensational trial.

In a development that stunned courtroom spectators and Wone’s family members, D.C. Superior Court Judge Lynn Leibovitz said it was “very probable” that defendants Joseph Price, Victor Zaborsky and Dylan Ward engaged in a massive cover-up of the murder and know the identity of Wone’s killer, as asserted by prosecutors.

But she said the government failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the men committed the offenses with which they were charged, forcing her to issue a not-guilty verdict in the non-jury trial. The defendants waived their right to a jury trial.

They are now scheduled to for a second trial in a $20 million wrongful death lawsuit that Wone’s wife and family members filed against them, which is expected to begin in the spring.

They have claimed an unknown intruder killed Wone after entering their upscale townhouse near Dupont Circle, where Wone was spending the night after working late in his nearby office. Wone, whose wife said he was straight, had been longtime friends with the three defendants.

Police and prosecutors argued there was no evidence of a break-in at the house and an autopsy showed Wone appeared to have been immobilized – possibly by a paralytic drug – before being stabbed three times in the chest.

#6 Md. recognizes out-of-state gay marriages

Maryland Attorney General Douglas Gansler issued a long-awaited legal opinion in February saying same-sex marriages performed in other states and countries most likely would have full legal standing in Maryland.

But in his 53-page opinion, Gansler said the Maryland Court of Appeals would have the final say in the matter if opponents of same-sex marriage decide to contest the legal standing of married same-sex couples living in or visiting the state.

Gansler’s opinion was hailed by LGBT activists and gay couples, who said they planned to marry in D.C. beginning in March, when the District’s same-sex marriage law took effect. But outraged opponents of same-sex marriage vowed to contest the Gansler opinion, and some called on the state legislature to impeach him over the issue.

Nearly a year after Gansler issued his opinion, it remained unclear whether same-sex married couples in the state have encountered problems with state agencies in receiving the same marriage-related benefits afforded opposite-sex married couples.

#7 GLOV calls for attention to hate crimes

The D.C. group Gays and Lesbians Opposing Violence (GLOV) says 2010 marked yet another year in which LGBT people were the victims in more than 70 percent of the total number of hate crimes reported in the District.

The LGBT community became alarmed earlier in the year when D.C. police issued an alert about nearly a half-dozen anti-gay assaults occurring near gay bars in the Dupont Circle and Logan Circle areas. In one case, a group of teenage males and females assaulted a gay man walking on P Street near Dupont Circle while shouting anti-gay names.

With teenagers and young adults emerging as the perpetrators in most of the anti-LGBT hate crimes, GLOV and other activists groups have called on the city’s public school system to increase diversity awareness programs foster better understanding of LGBT people.

#8 Trans woman claims assault by D.C. cop

Transgender activists have said D.C. police may have violated policies for addressing the transgender community in a Dec. 1 incident in which a transgender woman said she was assaulted by an off-duty police officer.

Chloe Alexander Moore, 25, was arrested on a charge of assault for spraying a chemical repellent into the face of Officer Raphael Radon. Radon was dressed in civilian clothes and, according to Moore, assaulted her after calling her names, leading her to believe she was in imminent danger. She said she squirted Radon with pepper spray in self-defense and did not know he was a police officer.

Two police sources told the Blade that a detective and sergeant who responded to the scene and interviewed witnesses initially determined that Radon started the altercation and he rather than Moore appeared to have committed an assault.

But police and court records show the two were overruled by a captain, who was not on the scene but was consulted by phone.

#9 Washington Blade re-launches

The Washington Blade resumed publishing as a local, independently owned newspaper in April after a November 2009 bankruptcy filing by its parent company, Window Media, forced it to shut down after 40 years of service as an LGBT publication.

Blade staff members, with the help of local advertisers and community supporters, launched the D.C. Agenda newspaper to fill in for the Blade immediately after the Blade shutdown. Following months of preparation, publisher Lynne Brown, editor Kevin Naff, and sales executive Brian Pitts formed a new company that bought the Blade’s name and remaining assets from the bankruptcy court.

The purchase enabled the new company to resume using the Blade’s name. The company – Brown Naff Pitts Omnimedia — has since launched a non-profit foundation to raise money to digitize the Blade’s print archives, making all back issues dating back to 1969 available to the public online.

The existing electronic archives, which covered back issues beginning in the late 1990s, were destroyed shortly before or after the bankruptcy filing when Window Media failed to pay a web hosting company the monthly fees required to maintain and store the archives on a rented computer server.

#10 MTV’s ‘Real World’ showcases D.C.

D.C.’s gay community joined in the suspense and merriment in early 2010 when MTV’s reality series “Real World” premiered its “Real World: D.C.” episodes, which were filmed in the District in 2009.

Much of the filming took place in a Dupont Circle mansion, where the cast resided while they visited Washington’s historic sites as well as many nightlife venues. Cast member Mike Manning, who is bisexual, was filmed in some of the city’s gay bars and clubs and was followed by an MTV video crew when he attended the Oct. 2009 Human Rights Campaign dinner, in which President Obama was the keynote speaker.

MTV crews filmed another cast member at the Washington Blade’s then offices in the National Press Building as she worked as a Blade photographer.

Christopher Dyer, who has served as director of the city’s Office of GLBT Affairs since 2007 under Mayor Adrian Fenty, was notified last week that Mayor-elect Vincent Gray will not be retaining him for the post when Gray takes office in January.

Dyer was among more than a dozen high-level Fenty appointees to receive a notice from the Gray transition team accepting the written resignations they submitted after Gray won election as mayor in November.

Under longstanding city protocol, all political appointees of an outgoing mayoral administration submit letters of resignation to the incoming mayor. The incoming mayor usually accepts the resignations of most of the officials but often chooses to retain some of them — either as interim or permanent appointees in the new administration.

“Its been an honor to serve the Mayor and LGBT residents of the District of Columbia,” Dyer said this week. “This has been an amazing experience for me and I am very fortunate to be given the opportunity to work a dream job. I look forward to providing whatever help appropriate to the incoming administration.”

Like other Fenty appointees to be replaced, Dyer is expected to remain in office until Dec. 30. Gray is to be sworn in as mayor Jan. 2.

Gray said last week that he expects to name a new head of the GLBT Affairs Office within the next week or two.

Sources familiar with the Gray transition team say Jeffrey Richardson, president of the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, which endorsed Gray for mayor, and Christopher Fitzgerald, head of Gray Pride, an LGBT arm of the Gray election campaign, are among those Gray is considering for the LGBT Affairs post.

LGBT and AIDS activists were also waiting to see who Gray names as head of the city’s Human Rights Office and AIDS office and whether he retains or replaces D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier.

The D.C. City Council Tuesday voted to restore $427,000 in proposed cuts by Mayor Adrian Fenty in city funding for community-based AIDS organizations, including the Whitman-Walker Clinic.

At the request of Mayor-elect Vincent Gray, who is finishing his term as Council chair, the Council approved a series of revisions to the mayor’s budget proposal that included restoring the cuts for groups that provide HIV-related services to city residents.

The action came during a marathon session that lasted until 9 p.m. in which the Council grappled with reconciling a projected $188 million budget shortfall the city is facing for fiscal year 2011 and far greater expected shortfalls for the following two years.

Gay D.C. Council member David Catania (I-At-Large), who chairs the Council’s Committee on Health, said he was pleased that his colleagues backed Gray’s proposal to restore the AIDS-related funds.

But he said a decision by the city to participate in an expanded Medicaid reimbursement program for low-income residents under President Obama’s health insurance reform package would likely have offset the cuts even if the Council did not restore them.

Catania said the funds Fenty proposed cutting were for paying community-based service providers like Whitman-Walker Clinic to perform a variety of HIV-related services for low-income residents, including HIV testing and counseling. He said the expanded Medicaid coverage made possible under the Obama health reform program, which Congress approved last year, now enables community clinics to obtain reimbursement for their services from patients’ Medicaid or other health insurance providers.

He noted that that phase of the Obama health program went into effect this year.

Due to a shortfall in tax revenue caused by the recession, Catania, Gray and other Council members said during Tuesday’s Council session that cuts would be needed in city spending. The said a failure to either cut the budget or approve steep tax increases could lead the city into bankruptcy or to a congressional take-over of the city’s budget process similar to the one that occurred in the early 1990s.

“Ninety-four percent of our residents now have health insurance,” Catania said. “We have the second lowest rate of uninsured in the country. As such, providers are going to have to work harder to get reimbursed from insurance companies that provide reimbursement as opposed to simply relying on local city grants,” he said.

“Everyone has to roll up their sleeves and work harder,” he said.

Whitman-Walker Executive Director Don Blanchon said that if the Fenty cuts were approved by the Council, a $145,000 city grant to the clinic for HIV testing and counseling would have been cut by $14,500, reducing the grant to $130,500.

Blanchon said a separate city grant of $144,500 for HIV-related legal services for low-income patients at the Clinic’s Max Robinson facility in Anacostia also would have been targeted for reduction, although he did not know the size of the reduction.

Ron Simmons, executive director of Us Helping Us, a community-based group that provides HIV-related services to black gay men, said his group expected to receive a similar cut in an HIV testing and counseling grant from the city had the Council approved the proposed cuts.

Simmons and Blanchon noted that the overwhelming amount of funding for the city’s AIDS programs, especially patient medical care, comes from the federal government through the Ryan White CARE Act and is not subject to city budget cuts.