National
Chairmen sending mixed signals on ‘Don’t Ask’
President Obama is being pressured to include a “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal as part of his upcoming defense budget request to Congress, but the response from two key Democrats to such a proposal could hinder any change in the law.
Two lawmakers with considerable sway over defense matters — and whether a repeal will initially be part of the fiscal year 2011 defense budget — are House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-Mo.) and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.).
As leaders of the congressional committees that handle defense matters, Skelton and Levin get first crack at determining what’s included in the defense budget after the president sends his base bill to Congress in February. The lawmakers can make changes to the president’s request in their chairman’s marks to the legislation before the rest of Congress takes action.
So if Obama includes “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal as part of his defense budget request, it’s possible for either Skelton or Levin to strike the language from the bill if they don’t want it there.
“You could make the argument that the chairman’s mark is the most vulnerable moment for what happens with repeal legislation this year,” said Aaron Belkin, director of the Palm Center, a think-tank on gays in the military at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Some advocates, including Belkin, are questioning whether Levin and Skelton would retain Obama’s request to lift the ban on open service in the U.S. armed forces as part of their chairman’s marks for the defense budget.
Belkin was particularly skeptical about Levin’s willingness to let repeal go forward because of the senator’s history on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
“Levin has been a huge problem on this issue,” Belkin said. “Who the hell knows where Levin is personally, but I would say that very few people in the United States have done more to obstruct the service of openly gay troops than Carl Levin.”
Belkin took issue with Levin’s abandoned plan to hold hearings last year on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Those hearings never took place.
“I think it’s been now three times that he’s announced that the Senate would hold hearings on ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ Belkin said. “He just made the announcement again that they’re going to have hearings. But why were there no hearings last year despite the repeated announcements?”
A Senate Armed Services Committee spokesperson didn’t respond to the DC Agenda’s request for comment on whether Levin would allow repeal language to remain in his chairman’s mark for the defense budget.
Last week, Levin announced the Senate Armed Services Committee would hold hearings on gays in the military by the end of this month and that Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen and Defense Secretary Robert Gates would testify.
Matt Canter, spokesperson for Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), said the hearing is scheduled for next week. Although not a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gillibrand has been a strong advocate for repealing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” since she took office last year.
Belkin also criticized Levin for not finding a Republican co-sponsor for a Senate repeal bill, which some say has prevented the introduction of the legislation in that chamber.
C. Dixon Osburn, former head of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, said Levin has gone on record several times as noting that he supports repeal of the ban, but acknowledged Levin is “somebody who’s very much a consensus builder within the Senate Armed Services Committee.”
“So if it’s not percolating up in the Senate Armed Services Committee, he’s going to be more reluctant even as he believes that the law should repealed, and right now you don’t have the bubbling up within the Senate Armed Services Committee,” Osburn said.
Although there’s concern among “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” opponents about Levin, Skelton has been the more vocal of the two lawmakers in supporting the existing ban on open service in the military. According to The Hill newspaper, Skelton said last week during an interview on C-SPAN’s “Newsmakers” that he is “personally not for changing the law.”
Still, both Belkin and Osburn said they aren’t as concerned about Skelton’s position on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” as they are with Levin.
“It’s not helpful to have the chairman of House Armed Services oppose you, but I don’t think he’s the center of gravity in the House any more,” Belkin said. “All that said, it is sad … Chairman Skelton stands for firing gay Arabic linguists during a national security emergency. I’m not quite sure why that makes him feel safer.”
Osburn said the only moderation that he’s seen from Skelton on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is his willingness in the past couple years to have House hearings on the issue.
“And I think that the hope is if there’s a strong majority in the House supporting repeal, that he will accede,” Osburn said. “I’m less sanguine since he’s announced that he supports delay, but I think that Congressman [Patrick] Murphy is such a strong leader on this, and he’s developed such support around this in the House, that it is still a good possibility that this can move forward in the House.”
Lara Battles, spokesperson for the House Armed Services Committee, said she couldn’t say whether Skelton would include repeal language in his chairman’s mark for the defense budget, which she said would be public in May.
In 2008, the House Armed Services personnel subcommittee held the first hearing on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in 15 years. Aaron Hunter, spokesperson for Rep. Susan Davis (D-Calif.), chair of the subcommittee, said the panel intends to hold another hearing, although a date hasn’t been set.
If either Levin or Skelton removes repeal language from the defense legislation, lawmakers could reinsert the provision through an amendment.
The Advocate reported last week that gay Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) said it doesn’t matter whether the Pentagon includes repeal in the budget request because lawmakers have the votes in the House to put the language in the legislation.
“I do not think it matters what the Pentagon says,” Frank was quoted as saying. “We will get the votes without it, I think.”
Some activists also were confident the House could muster enough support to pass an amendment that would lead to overturning the law. Still, whether there are 60 votes in the Senate to overcome a filibuster was in question.
Osburn said the Senate is a “much more difficult prospect” than the House because there isn’t a strong leader advocating for repeal in that chamber.
“Now that said, there’s a still a possibility,” he said. “There are still enough senators who support repeal that if the House moves on this, one or more senators could get together and ensure the amendment is attached to DOD authorization bill as well.”
If the House version of the bill has repeal language and the Senate version doesn’t, lawmakers would have to hash out whether repeal would be included in the final bill during conference committee — another potential point where the repeal strategy could fail.
Osburn said “it’s a possibility” that repeal language could survive conference, but that would depend on who congressional leaders appoint as conferees.
“The effort that the LGBT community would need to push for is to ensure that the conference committee includes people who are going to be supportive of this and will leave it in,” he said.
National
Medical groups file lawsuit over Trump deletion of health information
Crucial datasets included LGBTQ, HIV resources
Nine private medical and public health advocacy organizations, including two from D.C., filed a lawsuit on May 20 in federal court in Seattle challenging what it calls the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’s illegal deletion of dozens or more of its webpages containing health related information, including HIV information.
The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington, names as defendants Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and HHS itself, and several agencies operating under HHS and its directors, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration.
“This action challenges the widespread deletion of public health resources from federal agencies,” the lawsuit states. “Dozens (if not more) of taxpayer-funded webpages, databases, and other crucial resources have vanished since January 20, 2025, leaving doctors, nurses, researchers, and the public scrambling for information,” it says.
“These actions have undermined the longstanding, congressionally mandated regime; irreparably harmed Plaintiffs and others who rely on these federal resources; and put the nation’s public health infrastructure in unnecessary jeopardy,” the lawsuit continues.
It adds, “The removal of public health resources was apparently prompted by two recent executive orders – one focused on ‘gender ideology’ and the other targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion (‘DEI’) programs. Defendants implemented these executive orders in a haphazard manner that resulted in the deletion (inadvertent or otherwise) of health-related websites and databases, including information related to pregnancy risks, public health datasets, information about opioid-use disorder, and many other valuable resources.”
The lawsuit does not mention that it was President Donald Trump who issued the two executive orders in question.
A White House spokesperson couldn’t immediately be reached for comment on the lawsuit.
While not mentioning Trump by name, the lawsuit names as defendants in addition to HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr., Matthew Buzzelli, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health; Martin Makary, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration; Thomas Engels, administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration; and Charles Ezell, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management.
The 44-page lawsuit complaint includes an addendum with a chart showing the titles or descriptions of 49 “affected resource” website pages that it says were deleted because of the executive orders. The chart shows that just four of the sites were restored after initially being deleted.
Of the 49 sites, 15 addressed LGBTQ-related health issues and six others addressed HIV issues, according to the chart.
“The unannounced and unprecedented deletion of these federal webpages and datasets came as a shock to the medical and scientific communities, which had come to rely on them to monitor and respond to disease outbreaks, assist physicians and other clinicians in daily care, and inform the public about a wide range of healthcare issues,” the lawsuit states.
“Health professionals, nonprofit organizations, and state and local authorities used the websites and datasets daily in care for their patients, to provide resources to their communities, and promote public health,” it says.
Jose Zuniga, president and CEO of the International Association of Providers of AIDS Care (IAPAC), one of the organizations that signed on as a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said in a statement that the deleted information from the HHS websites “includes essential information about LGBTQ+ health, gender and reproductive rights, clinical trial data, Mpox and other vaccine guidance and HIV prevention resources.”
Zuniga added, “IAPAC champions evidence-based, data-informed HIV responses and we reject ideologically driven efforts that undermine public health and erase marginalized communities.”
Lisa Amore, a spokesperson for Whitman-Walker Health, D.C.’s largest LGBTQ supportive health services provider, also expressed concern about the potential impact of the HHS website deletions.
“As the region’s leader in HIV care and prevention, Whitman-Walker Health relies on scientific data to help us drive our resources and measure our successes,” Amore said in response to a request for comment from the Washington Blade.
“The District of Columbia has made great strides in the fight against HIV,” Amore said. “But the removal of public facing information from the HHS website makes our collective work much harder and will set HIV care and prevention backward,” she said.
The lawsuit calls on the court to issue a declaratory judgement that the “deletion of public health webpages and resources is unlawful and invalid” and to issue a preliminary or permanent injunction ordering government officials named as defendants in the lawsuit “to restore the public health webpages and resources that have been deleted and to maintain their web domains in accordance with their statutory duties.”
It also calls on the court to require defendant government officials to “file a status report with the Court within twenty-four hours of entry of a preliminary injunction, and at regular intervals, thereafter, confirming compliance with these orders.”
The health organizations that joined the lawsuit as plaintiffs include the Washington State Medical Association, Washington State Nurses Association, Washington Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Academy Health, Association of Nurses in AIDS Care, Fast-Track Cities Institute, International Association of Providers of AIDS Care, National LGBT Cancer Network, and Vermont Medical Society.
The Fast-Track Cities Institute and International Association of Providers of AIDS Care are based in D.C.
U.S. Federal Courts
Federal judge scraps trans-inclusive workplace discrimination protections
Ruling appears to contradict US Supreme Court precedent
Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas has struck down guidelines by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission designed to protect against workplace harassment based on gender identity and sexual orientation.
The EEOC in April 2024 updated its guidelines to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), which determined that discrimination against transgender people constituted sex-based discrimination as proscribed under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
To ensure compliance with the law, the agency recommended that employers honor their employees’ preferred pronouns while granting them access to bathrooms and allowing them to wear dress code-compliant clothing that aligns with their gender identities.
While the the guidelines are not legally binding, Kacsmaryk ruled that their issuance created “mandatory standards” exceeding the EEOC’s statutory authority that were “inconsistent with the text, history, and tradition of Title VII and recent Supreme Court precedent.”
“Title VII does not require employers or courts to blind themselves to the biological differences between men and women,” he wrote in the opinion.
The case, which was brought by the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation, presents the greatest setback for LGBTQ inclusive workplace protections since President Donald Trump’s issuance of an executive order on the first day of his second term directing U.S. federal agencies to recognize only two genders as determined by birth sex.
Last month, top Democrats from both chambers of Congress reintroduced the Equality Act, which would codify LGBTQ-inclusive protections against discrimination into federal law, covering employment as well as areas like housing and jury service.
The White House
Trump travels to Middle East countries with death penalty for homosexuality
President traveled to Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and United Arab Emirates
Homosexuality remains punishable by death in two of the three Middle East countries that President Donald Trump visited last week.
Saudi Arabia and Qatar are among the handful of countries in which anyone found guilty of engaging in consensual same-sex sexual relations could face the death penalty.
Trump was in Saudi Arabia from May 13-14. He traveled to Qatar on May 14.
“The law prohibited consensual same-sex sexual conduct between men but did not explicitly prohibit same-sex sexual relations between women,” notes the State Department’s 2023 human rights report, referring specifically to Qatar’s criminalization law. “The law was not systematically enforced. A man convicted of having consensual same-sex sexual relations could receive a sentence of seven years in prison. Under sharia, homosexuality was punishable by death; there were no reports of executions for this reason.”
Trump on May 15 arrived in Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates.
The State Department’s 2023 human rights report notes the “penalty for individuals who engaged in ‘consensual sodomy with a man'” in the country “was a minimum prison sentence of six months if the individual’s partner or guardian filed a complaint.”
“There were no known reports of arrests or prosecutions for consensual same-sex sexual conduct. LGBTQI+ identity, real or perceived, could be deemed an act against ‘decency or public morality,’ but there were no reports during the year of persons prosecuted under these provisions,” reads the report.
The report notes Emirati law also criminalizes “men who dressed as women or entered a place designated for women while ‘disguised’ as a woman.” Anyone found guilty could face up to a year in prison and a fine of up to 10,000 dirhams ($2,722.60.)
Trump returned to the U.S. on May 16.
The White House notes Trump during the trip secured more than $2 trillion “in investment agreements with Middle Eastern nations ($200 billion with the United Arab Emirates, $600 billion with Saudi Arabia, and $1.2 trillion with Qatar) for a more safe and prosperous future.”
Former President Joe Biden traveled to Saudi Arabia in 2022.
Saudi Arabia is scheduled to host the 2034 World Cup. The 2022 World Cup took place in Qatar.
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