Local
Record turnout for Pride
‘Wonderfully diverse’ crowd defies heat, humidity
Capital Pride’s parade June 12 featured 175 contingents — the most ever for the event. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
A record-breaking 175 contingents in last weekend’s Capital Pride parade and about 250,000 people at the street festival the next day showed the world how “wonderfully diverse we are as a community,” according to the event’s lead organizer.
Dyana Mason, executive director of Capital Pride Alliance, the non-profit group that organized Washington’s 35th annual LGBT Pride events, called the festivities a “great success.”
“It was wonderfully diverse and had a true cross section of our community,” she said. “It was just wonderful to see everybody from Results Gym to Rainbow Families D.C. to faith communities to the leather contingent. Everybody was there and just being themselves.”
As in past years, the parade’s lead contingent was the lesbian motorcycle group Dykes on Bikes. And a short distance behind them, a contingent of the city’s elected officials joined the parade.
Among them were Mayor Adrian Fenty and his chief rival in the September Democratic primary, City Council Chairman Vincent Gray.
Others included D.C. Congressional Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton and gay D.C. Council members David Catania (I-At Large) and Jim Graham (D-Ward 1), who also are up for re-election this year.
They were joined by Council members Phil Mendelson (D-At Large), Kwame Brown (D-At Large), Jack Evans (D-Ward 2), Mary Cheh (D-Ward 3) and Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6).
Also marching in the parade was former D.C. Parks & Recreation director and gay City Council candidate Clark Ray, who is challenging Mendelson in the September primary.
The politicians, including Fenty and Gray, appeared to be well received as they passed large crowds along a parade route that stretched from 24th and P streets, N.W., around Dupont Circle to the gay enclave along 17th Street.
From there, the parade turned east on P Street, where it passed the official reviewing stand in front of the Whole Foods supermarket near 15th and P streets before ending on 14th Street at Thomas Circle.
The politicians — all of whom are strong supporters of LGBT civil rights — were quickly followed by colorful floats carrying performing drag queens, shirtless male swim team members, gym enthusiasts riding exercise machines, and country western dancers performing the two-step.
Capital Pride officials identified certain contingents as winners of Capital Pride’s annual parade awards: Ziegfeld’s/Secrets nightclub took the Cher Award for Best Theme/Energy; Results Gym captured the Tina Turner Award for Best Float; D.C.’s Different Drummers won the Nancy Sinatra Award for Best Marching Contingent; G Worldwide Resorts earned the Dame Edna Award for Best Visiting Contingent; and Fuego gay bar received the Liberace Award for Most Outrageous.
Also receiving loud applause and cheers along the parade route were the contingents and cars carrying this year’s Capital Pride heroes and super heroes, who were selected for their longtime support for LGBT-related causes.
Among them was Deacon Maccubbin, the former owner of Lambda Rising bookstore who is credited with initiating and organizing the city’s first annual LGBT Pride celebration in 1975.
For many activists, the parade’s route along 17th Street between R and Q streets, N.W., had a special significance this year. On June 10, three days before the parade kick-off, Fenty led a ceremony naming the section of 17th Street between R and Q streets Frank Kameny Way after the nationally recognized D.C. gay civil rights leader.
The ceremony included the unveiling of a newly installed street sign bearing the name Frank Kameny Way, which was visible to parade goers. The street-naming came about through an executive order issued by Fenty.
Kameny, who is credited with founding the city’s gay civil rights movement in the late 1950s, spoke at the ceremony, saying that he could never have predicted the advances in LGBT rights since he was fired in 1957 from his job as a civilian astronomer with the Army Map service because of his sexual orientation.
Joining Fenty in the street naming ceremony was Jack Evans, the Ward 2 Council member whose district includes the newly designated Kameny Way, and gay ANC Commissioner Mike Silverstein, who was among the Dupont Circle ANC commissioners that formally requested the street’s designation.
Also speaking at the ceremony was John Berry, the gay director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Berry noted that OPM’s predecessor agency, the U.S. Civil Service Commission, was the agency that fired Kameny more than 50 years ago for being gay.
“Frank is the perfect storm,” Berry said. “The wall of resistance that he encountered when he challenged his dismissal back in 1957 would have been insurmountable to most people. With no more support than his own brilliant mind and his own powerful lungs, he faced down the United States government.”
Berry noted that over the ensuing decades, Kameny played a key role in guiding the LGBT civil rights movement through battles that ended the government’s ban on civilian gay employees, ended the psychiatric and psychological professions’ classification of homosexuality as a mental disorder, and lifted the government’s ban on issuing security clearances to gay federal employees and contract workers.
“Frank, for every one of us who walk this street, and I walk it daily, your name up here is going to remind us of the power of one person, the power of persistence,” Berry said. “You have changed the world for the better.”
But on the day of the parade, Fenty and other parade goers passing along 17th Street were greeted by another type of sign: professionally printed poster-sized placards bearing the message “Fenty is M.I.A.”
Gay Democratic activist Lane Hudson, who is backing Gray in the mayor’s race, said he and others had the signs made and attached them to light poles along the parade route on 17th Street and along the section of P Street where the parade reviewing stand was located.
Hudson said the placards were intended to deliver a message to parade participants that Fenty has been “missing in action” on a number of LGBT-related issues by not speaking out or meeting with members of the community to address those issues. Anti-LGBT hate crimes, LGBT youth matters and the HIV/AIDS fight were among the issues cited by the signs as issues to which Fenty is not devoting enough attention.
Fenty backers dispute those assertions, though, saying the mayor has extensively addressed those issues during his more than three years in office.
The signs Hudson placed on the light poles list a website for obtaining more information on the subject, but it wasn’t operational earlier this week. Hudson said he planned to activate the site soon.
Capital Pride Alliance President Michael Lutz said the June 13 Capital Pride street festival, held along Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., between Third and Seventh streets, also appeared to have attracted an unprecedented number of groups, businesses and vendors. Literature released by Capital Pride shows nearly 250 booths lining Pennsylvania Avenue and several side streets.
Among the businesses setting up booths were SunTrust Bank, the Spy Museum, Verizon Wireless, America Online, the New York Times, and the Washington Nationals Baseball Club. Dozens of local and national LGBT organizations also had booths, with many promoting their latest programs and projects.
The intense heat and humidity throughout the day of the street festival was interrupted briefly as rain showers fell for less than five minutes.
Mason credited drag performer Destiny B. Childs with keeping the entertainment going and the crowd pleased from the festival’s main stage during the rain. With the U.S. Capitol as a backdrop looming above the stage, Childs, whose legal name is Richard Legg, staged a show “that was really something to see,” Mason said.
Country western singer Chely Wright, the festival’s headliner performer, closed the program on the main stage to cheering fans. Wright, who came out as lesbian earlier this year in People magazine, recently completed a new album and is promoting an autobiography.
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Congratulations to Jamie Leeds, chef extraordinaire, and owner of Hank’s Oyster Bars, as she ventures into some new areas. Leeds is an award-winning Washington, D.C.–area chef, restaurateur, and entrepreneur with more than three decades of experience shaping the region’s dining scene.
Her first new venture is a restaurant opening in Alexandria this week. It will be called Hank’s Pasta Bar, bringing a personalized twist to classic Italian dining with a hiddenrestaurant-inside-a-restaurant in Old Town, Alexandria. The new trattoria is above Hank’s Oyster Bar, and will feature a build-your-own menu, marking a new direction for Leeds in partnership with chef Darren Norris. Norris brings more than three decades of experience to Hank’s Pasta Bar, with a foundation grounded in Italian cooking. The grand opening was scheduled for May 14. The elevated casual eatery blends an inventive chef-driven menu with an easy-going, sit-down dining experience that puts guests in charge. Hank’s Pasta Bar bridges the gap between elevated fast casual, like Norris’s Shibuya, and full-service dining, like Leeds’s Hank’s Oyster Bar. Diners order electronically at the table, but unlike fast casuals, food and beverages are delivered on plate ware, and a server is on site at all times.
The restaurant-inside-a-restaurant, welcomes guests to dine in with a full bar, including Italian wines and craft cocktails, maintaining its focus on traditional Italian fare with contemporary touches, including a build-your-own pasta bowl experience starting at $16. Create your own pasta bowl from seven artisanal pastas (including gluten-free), nine made-in-house sauces, proteins, vegetables, and toppings. Leeds said, “It’s the kind of place you’d find down a side street in a Tuscan hill town, after being tipped off by a friend who says, ‘trust me.’ If you know, you know.”
The restaurant will continue Hank’s community partnerships, including with Real Food for Kids, supporting programs that improve school food and nutrition equity.
In addition to this you should try Jaimie’s other new venture. Back Door Taco at Hank’s in Dupont Circle. You walk down the alley from 17th Street to the back door of Hank’s, and enter a small patio to partake of great tacos and interesting cocktails.
District of Columbia
HIV Vaccine Awareness Day set for May 18
Whitman-Walker joins nationwide recognition of efforts to develop vaccine
Whitman-Walker Health, the D.C.-based community healthcare center that specializes in HIV/AIDS and LGBTQ-related health services, will join health care advocates from across the country to support efforts to develop an HIV vaccine on HIV Vaccine Awareness Day on May 18.
“HIV Awareness Day, observed annually on May 18, was established to recognize and thank the volunteers, scientists, health professionals, and community members working toward a safe and effective prevention HIV vaccine,” Whitman-Walker said in a statement.
“Led by the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), the day is also an opportunity to educate communities about the critical importance of preventive HIV vaccine research,” the statement says.
It adds, “The reality is that any new vaccine discovery must be built community by community, institution by institution, and then it must reach everyone – especially the communities who have carried the heaviest burden of this epidemic.”
On its own website, the National Institutes of Health says HIV Vaccine Awareness Day also highlights its longstanding efforts, coordinated by its Office of AIDS Research, to support researchers’ efforts to develop an HIV vaccine.
“Researchers are making promising headway in efforts to develop a safe, effective HIV vaccine,” it says in a statement on its website.
A Whitman-Walker spokesperson said Whitman-Walker was not holding a specific event to observe HIV Vaccine Awareness Day, but it will recognize the day as a way of encouragement for its ongoing work to address the AIDS epidemic and support for vaccine research.
“Today, no one has to die from HIV,” said Whitman-Walker’s Health System division’s CEO, Dr. Heather Aaron in the Whitman-Walker statement. “We have the treatments, the technology, and the research to change outcomes, and yet people in our community are still dying from HIV//AIDS,” she said in the statement.
“That is unacceptable, and it is exactly why our work continues,” she added. “Here in D.C. with more focus on Southeast D.C., the Whitman-Walker Health System remains committed to making a difference through cutting-edge research, policy advocacy, and philanthropy, because fair access to life-saving treatment is not a privilege. It is a right.”
District of Columbia
Capital Stonewall Democrats endorses Janeese Lewis George for D.C. mayor
Group also backed D.C. Council, Congressional delegate, AG candidates
The Capital Stonewall Democrats, D.C.’s largest local LGBTQ political organization, announced on May 14 that it has endorsed D.C. Councilmember Janeese Lewis George (D-Ward 4) for mayor in the city’s June 16 Democratic primary.
Lewis George along with former D.C. Councilmember Kenyan McDuffie (D-At-Large) are considered by political observers to be the two leading candidates among the seven candidates competing in the Democratic primary election for mayor.
Both have strong, long-standing records of support on LGBTQ issues, indicating Capital Stonewall Democrats members, like LGBTQ voters across the city, are likely choosing a candidate based on non-LGBTQ related issues.
In a May 14 statement, the group announced its endorsements in seven other Democratic primary races, including D.C. Council Chair Phil Mendelson, who is running unopposed in the primary. Also endorsed is D.C. Councilmember Robert White (D-At-Large), who is one of five Democratic candidates competing for the position of D.C. delegate to the U.S. House of Representatives.
D.C. Councilmember Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2) is among the four candidates competing with White for that post, and who like White has a strong record of support on LGBTQ issues.
In the At-Large D.C. Council race for which incumbent Anita Bonds is not running for re-election, Capital Stonewall Democrats has endorsed community activist and LGBTQ ally Oye Owolewa in a nine candidate race.
For the Ward 1 D.C. Council election, in which five LGBTQ supportive candidates are competing, the group did not make an endorsement because none of the candidate received a required 60 percent of the endorsement vote cast by Capital Stonewall Democrats members, according to the group’s former president, Howard Garrett.
The statement announcing its endorsements shows that it decided to list its “Preferred Ranking” of each of the Ward 1 Democratic candidates as part of the city’s newly implemented ranked choice voting system. It lists gay candidate Miguel Trindade Deramo as first, bisexual candidate Aparna Raj second, Jackie Reyes Yanes third, Rashida Brown fourth, and Terry Lynch fifth.
In the remaining ward Council races, Capital Stonewall Democrats endorsed Councilmember Matt Fruman (D-Ward 3), who is running unopposed for re-election; Councilmember Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5), the Council’s only gay member who is being challenged by two opponents; and Councilmember Charles Allen (D-Ward 6), who is running unopposed for re-election.
The group also chose not to make an endorsement in the special election for another At-Large D.C. Council seat that became vacant when then-Independent Councilmember McDuffie resigned to enable him to run for mayor as a Democrat. Under the city’s Home Rule Charter adopted by Congress, that at large sweat is restricted to a “non-majority party” candidate, meaning a non-Democrat.
The three candidates running for the seat, all Independents, include incumbent Doni Crawford, who was appointed to the seat earlier this year; former D.C. Councilmember Elissa Silverman; and Jacque Patterson. All three have expressed support on LGBTQ related issues.
“The organization’s endorsement process included candidate questionnaires, public forums, and direct voting by active CSD members,” the statement announcing its endorsements says. “Each endorsement reflects the collective voice of 173 LGBTQ+ Democrats who voted in the process and are committed to building lasting political power in the District,” according to the statement. “Candidates that reached 60 percent support received the endorsement.”
Garrett, the group’s former president, acknowledged that with nearly all candidates running in D.C. elections expressing strong support for the LGBTQ community, many if not most of the group’s members most likely chose a candidate based on issues other than LGBTQ related issues.
He said he believes Lewis George, who he is supporting and is viewed as a progressive candidate who self-identifies as a Democratic Socialist, compared to McDuffie, who is viewed as a moderate Democrat, captured the group’s endorsement based on the view that she is the best person to lead the city going forward.
“I believe that Capital Stonewall members voted for Janeese Lewis George because we’re tired of the status quo and we need a new, bold leader to not only move our city forward but also to stand up to Donald Trump and his administration,” Garrett told the Washington Blade.
McDuffie’s LGBTQ supporters, including former Capital Stonewall Democrats presidents David Meadows and Kurt Vorndran, have argued that McDuffie’s positions on a wide range of issues, including LGBTQ issues, show him to be the best candidates to lead the city at this time and In future years.
The group’s endorsement of Lewis George comes one week after GLAA DC, a nonpartisan LGBTQ advocacy group, awarded her its highest candidate rating of +10.
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