Local
D.C. slaying of gay man is second in two weeks
On Jan. 10, police found 47-year-old Gordon Rivers along the 2600 block of Naylor Road, S.E., suffering from multiple gunshot wounds. Police said Rivers, a resident of Brandywine, Md., was pronounced dead a short time later after being taken to an area hospital.
One of Rivers’ friends circulated an e-mail Tuesday saying Rivers was a regular patron of the D.C. gay bar Bachelor’s Mill. A source familiar with the case said the police homicide squad earlier this week informed the department’s Gay & Lesbian Liaison Unit that Rivers was gay and invited the unit to assist in the investigation.
D.C. Police Capt. Edward Delgado, director of the department’s special liaison units, including the GLLU, circulated a police flyer with Rivers’ photo on Tuesday in an e-mail to local LGBT activists. He said detectives learned that Rivers was gay through their investigation of the case.
“There is no indication at this time that this homicide occurred as a result of a hate crime,” Delgado said.
Officer Helen Andrews, a police spokesperson, told DC Agenda on Wednesday that the homicide squad had no additional information on the case as of Wednesday, but police might release more details shortly.
Rivers’ murder came exactly two weeks after police found gay D.C. resident Anthony Perkins, 29, shot to death on Dec. 27 in his car near the intersection of Fourth and Oakwood streets, S.E. Police said they had yet to determine a motive and had no suspects in the Perkins case.
But homicide investigators said they were looking into a tip provided by Rev. Anthony Motley, a city minister and candidate for a seat on the D.C. City Council. Motley told DC Agenda that a mutual friend of his and Perkins informed him that Perkins may have been the target of an unidentified man believed to have committed a string of robberies in the neighborhood where Perkins was shot.
Perkins knew the robbery suspect and the suspect became “paranoid” that Perkins would report him to police, Motley recounted the mutual friend as saying.
Police said anyone with information about either of the two cases should call the police 24-hour hotline at 202-727-9099 or the homicide squad at 202-645-9600. The city offers a reward of up to $25,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of individuals charged with a homicide.
The police flyer released in the Rivers case calls on members of the community to contact these homicide detectives with information on that case: Det. Jed Worrell, 202-645-9618 (desk), 202-486-1596 (cell); Det. George Singletary, 202-645-4376 (desk), 202-487-9488 (cell).
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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