National
Obama cheered at Pride reception
Family leave, hospital visitation changes announced
During a White House reception keyed to Pride month, President Barack Obama said change begins not in Washington but ‘with acts of compassion — and sometimes defiance — across America.’ (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
President Barack Obama encouraged LGBT people to stand up for their rights and who they are during a White House reception Tuesday where attendees greeted him with cheers and applause.
At a celebration commemorating June as Pride month, Obama commended the invitees for their work and said their visit was a reminder that the change he called for during his presidential campaign “never comes — or at least never begins — in Washington.”
“It begins with acts of compassion — and sometimes defiance — across America,” he said. “And it begins when these impositions of conscience start opening hearts that had been closed, and when we finally see each other’s humanity, whatever our differences.”
Unlike many of Obama’s LGBT critics, people at the Pride reception welcomed the president warmly with thunderous applause and cheers as he and Vice President Joseph Biden entered the East Room, where the reception was held.
An estimated 300 people were expected to attend the event, although the actual number in attendance appeared closer to 100 as the event took place.
According to people familiar with Tuesday’s reception, invitees were restricted to the heads of state equality groups, U.S. House members, LGBT people with compelling stories and a contingent of LGBT youth. The leaders of national LGBT organizations didn’t receive invitations.
During the event, Obama addressed two changes his administration is making to afford more rights to LGBT people and their families. The newly announced changes cap off a series of pro-LGBT changes his administration has made in recent weeks in apparent connection with June as Pride month.
The first change, formally issued earlier in the day by the Labor Department, sets new rules to reinterpret the Family & Medical Leave Act to include same-sex couples and their children.
“And in an announcement today, the Department of Labor made clear that under the Family & Medical Leave Act, same-sex couples — as well as others raising children — are to be treated like the caretakers that they are,” Obama said.
According to a statement from the Labor Department, the Obama administration reinterpreted the definition of “son and daughter” under FMLA to extend family leave rights to any worker who cares for a child, including the same-sex partner of a biological parent.
FMLA, enacted in 1993, allows workers to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave during any 12-month period to care for loved ones, or themselves, and allows employees to take time off from work for the adoption or the birth of a child.
Obama also touted recent actions by the Department of Health & Human Services following through on an April hospital memorandum. Obama’s order directed HHS to work on implementing regulations in which hospitals receiving Medicare and Medicaid funding must allow same-sex partners to have hospital visitation rights and the ability to make emergency medical decisions for each other.
The president said Health & Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Tuesday sent a letter asking hospitals “to adopt these changes now — even before the rule takes effect.”
Following the White House Pride reception, the Department of Health & Human Services made public the letter that Sebelius sent to hospitals with the request for “voluntary support” until new regulations are published.
“Your actions could spare many patients the pain of being separated from a loved one during an admission to a hospital — often one of the most anxious times in their lives,” Sebelius wrote.
In addition to announcing new administrative changes, the president also renewed his call for legislative changes to eliminate discrimination against LGBT people.
Obama reiterated his call to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, citing his belief that LGBT couples “deserve the same rights and responsibilities afforded to any married couple in this country.” He also called on Congress to approve a trans-inclusive Employment Non-Discrimination Act.
“No one in America should be fired because they’re gay,” Obama said. “It’s not right, it’s not who we are as Americans, and we are going to put a stop to it.”
Obama also called for an end of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” citing recent congressional votes to repeal the statute and an upcoming vote in the full Senate on the defense budget bill to which repeal language is attached.
“We have never been closer to ending this discriminatory policy,” Obama said. “And I’m going to keep on fighting until that bill is on my desk and I can sign it.”
The president said the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal compromise Congress pushed forward is the best way to approach an end to the law because the measure allows the Pentagon to complete its review by the end of this year.
Obama said the review process is important not only to have the votes for passage in Congress, but to ensure “the change is accepted and implemented effectively.”
A number of high-profile LGBT Americans were at the reception, including some who’ve recently made headlines.
Notables included Constance McMillan, the lesbian high school student from Aberdeen, Miss. who was barred from taking her girlfriend to prom; Janice Langbehn, a lesbian whose inability to see her dying partner in the hospital prompted Obama to issue the hospital memorandum; and Chely Wright, the country music singer who recently came out as lesbian and performed earlier this month at Capital Pride.
Also in attendance were Reps. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) and Patrick Murphy (D-Pa.), as well as gay Reps. Jared Polis (D-Pa.) and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.).
Other attendees were high-ranking members of the Obama administration, including White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Tina Tchen, director of the White House Office of Public Engagement.
Openly gay administration officials at the event included John Berry, director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management; Fred Hochberg, president of the U.S. Export-Import Bank; Nancy Sutley, chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality; and Brian Bond, LGBT liaison for the White House.
Tuesday’s reception capped a series of other events this week in various executive departments celebrating June as Pride month. These celebrations featured remarks from high-profile officials in the Obama administration, including U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
At the White House reception, the contingent of LGBT youth received special attention from Obama for what he said was bravely standing up for themselves and seeking visibility.
“It’s not easy standing up all the time and being who you are,” he said. ”But they’re showing us the way forward. These young people are helping to build a more perfect union, a nation where all of us are equal; each of us is free to pursue our own versions of happiness.”
Obama said the young LGBT people at the White House reception served as a reminder that “we all have an obligation to ensure that no young person is ever made to feel worthless or alone — ever.”
Among the LGBT youth present at the White House reception was Morgan Keenan, an advisor for an LGBT youth group based in St. Louis, Mo. known as Growing American Youth.
Keenan said prior to the president’s remarks, Obama met with 15 or 16 young people who identified as LGBT — including two young people who came as part of Keenan’s delegation from St. Louis.
“For the youth that I brought, it’s going to change their world,” Keenan said. “They’re going to come out of there different than when they went in, but I hope that he listens to them.”
People at the event — many of whom were donors and contributors to the Democratic Party — largely had kind words about Obama and the progress his administration has made on LGBT issues.
Estevan Garcia, a gay pediatrician and New York resident, said he came to the reception representing the Family Equality Council, a national LGBT family organization to which he noted he often donates.
Garcia said family issues are particularly important to him and his partner because he’s married and has three children. He described the president’s remarks during the reception as “right on.”
“We’re big supporters and have been for a while,” Garcia said. “We felt that he really is working behind the scenes a little bit to push our causes.”
Garcia said the advancement of LGBT issues is “a slow process” and he’s willing to give Obama “the benefit of a doubt” on the matter.
Similarly appreciative of Obama’s efforts was George Meldrum, a gay Democratic lobbyist and activist from Wilmington, Del.
“I like the direction he’s going,” Meldrum said. “I understand the nature of politics and I’m very patient, partly because of the nature of the work that I do. Politics is all about compromise.”
Meldrum, 62, commended Obama for making pro-LGBT changes through administrative action, which he said enables the president to move forward without going through the legislative system, where he might not find success.
“He’s saying the right things and I think he’s doing the right things,” Meldrum said. “His plate is very full. We’re one of the things on that plate.”
But one reception attendee who was critical of the Obama administration’s progress was Alexandra Beninda, a transgender D.C. resident and Democratic activist.
Beninda said the president’s remarks during the reception — as they were during his campaign — were “very hopeful and encouraging and all that,” but she’s seeking more.
“I do get feeling that a lot more could be done and wonder what direction we can point them in terms of trying to get things done,” she said.
Citing concern about the failure so far to pass ENDA, Beninda said current law is creating an environment where “people are getting fired from their jobs and being denied jobs on a daily basis.”
“Basically, what it comes down to is you have an administration and a Democratic Legislature that is allowing discrimination on a regular basis and not taking the right steps to do anything about it,” she said.
Beninda said she wants Obama to be “a lot more forceful” with Congress to prompt lawmakers to action on ENDA and other pro-LGBT bills.
U.S. Federal Courts
Judge temporarily blocks executive orders targeting LGBTQ, HIV groups
Lambda Legal filed the lawsuit in federal court
A federal judge on Monday blocked the enforcement of three of President Donald Trump’s executive orders that would have threatened to defund nonprofit organizations providing health care and services for LGBTQ people and those living with HIV.
The preliminary injunction was awarded by Judge Jon Tigar of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in a case, San Francisco AIDS Foundation v. Trump, filed by Lambda Legal and eight other organizations.
Implementation of the executive orders — two aimed at diversity, equity, and inclusion along with one targeting the transgender community — will be halted pending the outcome of the litigation challenging them.
“This is a critical win — not only for the nine organizations we represent, but for LGBTQ communities and people living with HIV across the country,” said Jose Abrigo, Lambda Legal’s HIV Project director and senior counsel on the case.
“The court blocked anti-equity and anti-LGBTQ executive orders that seek to erase transgender people from public life, dismantle DEI efforts, and silence nonprofits delivering life-saving services,” Abrigo said. “Today’s ruling acknowledges the immense harm these policies inflict on these organizations and the people they serve and stops Trump’s orders in their tracks.”
Tigar wrote, in his 52-page decision, “While the Executive requires some degree of freedom to implement its political agenda, it is still bound by the constitution.”
“And even in the context of federal subsidies, it cannot weaponize Congressionally appropriated funds to single out protected communities for disfavored treatment or suppress ideas that it does not like or has deemed dangerous,” he said.
Without the preliminary injunction, the judge wrote, “Plaintiffs face the imminent loss of federal funding critical to their ability to provide lifesaving healthcare and support services to marginalized LGBTQ populations,” a loss that “not only threatens the survival of critical programs but also forces plaintiffs to choose between their constitutional rights and their continued existence.”
The organizations in the lawsuit are located in California (San Francisco AIDS Foundation, Los Angeles LGBT Center, GLBT Historical Society, and San Francisco Community Health Center), Arizona (Prisma Community Care), New York (The NYC LGBT Community Center), Pennsylvania (Bradbury-Sullivan Community Center), Maryland (Baltimore Safe Haven), and Wisconsin (FORGE).
U.S. Supreme Court
Activists rally for Andry Hernández Romero in front of Supreme Court
Gay asylum seeker ‘forcibly deported’ to El Salvador, described as political prisoner
More than 200 people gathered in front of the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday and demanded the Trump-Vance administration return to the U.S. a gay Venezuelan asylum seeker who it “forcibly disappeared” to El Salvador.
Lindsay Toczylowski, president of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, a Los Angeles-based organization that represents Andry Hernández Romero, is among those who spoke alongside U.S. Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) and Human Rights Campaign Campaigns and Communications Vice President Jonathan Lovitz. Sarah Longwell of the Bulwark, Pod Save America’s Jon Lovett, and Tim Miller are among those who also participated in the rally.
“Andry is a son, a brother. He’s an actor, a makeup artist,” said Toczylowski. “He is a gay man who fled Venezuela because it was not safe for him to live there as his authentic self.”
(Video by Michael K. Lavers)
The White House on Feb. 20 designated Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang, as an “international terrorist organization.”
President Donald Trump on March 15 invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which the Associated Press notes allows the U.S. to deport “noncitizens without any legal recourse.” The Trump-Vance administration subsequently “forcibly removed” Hernández and hundreds of other Venezuelans to El Salvador.
Toczylowski said she believes Hernández remains at El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, a maximum-security prison known by the Spanish acronym CECOT. Toczylowski also disputed claims that Hernández is a Tren de Aragua member.
“Andry fled persecution in Venezuela and came to the U.S. to seek protection. He has no criminal history. He is not a member of the Tren de Aragua gang. Yet because of his crown tattoos, we believe at this moment that he sits in a torture prison, a gulag, in El Salvador,” said Toczylowski. “I say we believe because we have not had any proof of life for him since the day he was put on a U.S. government-funded plane and forcibly disappeared to El Salvador.”
“Andry is not alone,” she added.
Takano noted the federal government sent his parents, grandparents, and other Japanese Americans to internment camps during World War II under the Alien Enemies Act. The gay California Democrat also described Hernández as “a political prisoner, denied basic rights under a law that should have stayed in the past.”
“He is not a case number,” said Takano. “He is a person.”
Hernández had been pursuing his asylum case while at the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego.
A hearing had been scheduled to take place on May 30, but an immigration judge the day before dismissed his case. Immigrant Defenders Law Center has said it will appeal the decision to the Board of Immigration Appeals, which the Justice Department oversees.
“We will not stop fighting for Andry, and I know neither will you,” said Toczylowski.
Friday’s rally took place hours after Attorney General Pam Bondi said Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who the Trump-Vance administration wrongfully deported to El Salvador, had returned to the U.S. Abrego will face federal human trafficking charges in Tennessee.
National
A husband’s story: Michael Carroll reflects on life with Edmund White
Iconic author died this week; ‘no sunnier human in the world’
Unlike most gay men of my generation, I’ve only been to Fire Island twice. Even so, the memory of my first visit has never left me. The scenery was lovely, and the boys were sublime — but what stood out wasn’t the beach or the parties. It was a quiet afternoon spent sipping gin and tonics in a mid-century modern cottage tucked away from the sand and sun.
Despite Fire Island’s reputation for hedonism, our meeting was more accident than escapade. Michael Carroll — a Facebook friend I’d chatted with but never met — mentioned that he and his husband, Ed, would be there that weekend, too. We agreed to meet for a drink. On a whim, I checked his profile and froze. Ed was author Edmund White.
I packed a signed copy of Carroll’s “Little Reef” and a dog-eared hardback of “A Boy’s Own Story,” its spine nearly broken from rereads. I was excited to meet both men and talk about writing, even briefly.
Yesterday, I woke to the news that Ed had passed away. Ironically, my first thought was of Michael.
This week, tributes to Edmund White are everywhere — rightly celebrating his towering legacy as a novelist, essayist, and cultural icon. I’ve read all of his books, and I could never do justice to the scope of a career that defined and chronicled queer life for more than half a century. I’ll leave that to better-prepared journalists.
But in those many memorials, I’ve noticed something missing. When Michael Carroll is mentioned, it’s usually just a passing reference: “White’s partner of thirty years, twenty-five years his junior.” And yet, in the brief time I spent with this couple on Fire Island, it was clear to me that Michael was more than a footnote — he was Ed’s anchor, editor, companion, and champion. He was the one who knew his husband best.
They met in 1995 after Michael wrote Ed a fan letter to tell him he was coming to Paris. “He’d lost the great love of his life a year before,” Michael told me. “In one way, I filled a space. Understand, I worshiped this man and still do.”
When I asked whether there was a version of Ed only he knew, Michael answered without hesitation: “No sunnier human in the world, obvious to us and to people who’ve only just or never met him. No dark side. Psychology had helped erase that, I think, or buffed it smooth.”
Despite the age difference and divergent career arcs, their relationship was intellectually and emotionally symbiotic. “He made me want to be elegant and brainy; I didn’t quite reach that, so it led me to a slightly pastel minimalism,” Michael said. “He made me question my received ideas. He set me free to have sex with whoever I wanted. He vouchsafed my moods when they didn’t wobble off axis. Ultimately, I encouraged him to write more minimalistically, keep up the emotional complexity, and sleep with anyone he wanted to — partly because I wanted to do that too.”
Fully open, it was a committed relationship that defied conventional categories. Ed once described it as “probably like an 18th-century marriage in France.” Michael elaborated: “It means marriage with strong emotion — or at least a tolerance for one another — but no sex; sex with others. I think.”
That freedom, though, was always anchored in deep devotion and care — and a mutual understanding that went far beyond art, philosophy, or sex. “He believed in freedom and desire,” Michael said, “and the two’s relationship.”
When I asked what all the essays and articles hadn’t yet captured, Michael paused. “Maybe that his writing was tightly knotted, but that his true personality was vulnerable, and that he had the defense mechanisms of cheer and optimism to conceal that vulnerability. But it was in his eyes.”
The moment that captured who Ed was to him came at the end. “When he was dying, his second-to-last sentence (garbled then repeated) was, ‘Don’t forget to pay Merci,’ the cleaning lady coming the next day. We had had a rough day, and I was popping off like a coach or dad about getting angry at his weakness and pushing through it. He took it almost like a pack mule.”
Edmund White’s work shaped generations — it gave us language for desire, shame, wit, and liberation. But what lingers just as powerfully is the extraordinary life Ed lived with a man who saw him not only as a literary giant but as a real person: sunny, complex, vulnerable, generous.
In the end, Ed’s final words to his husband weren’t about his books or his legacy. They were about care, decency, and love. “You’re good,” he told Michael—a benediction, a farewell, maybe even a thank-you.
And now, as the world celebrates the prolific writer and cultural icon Edmund White, it feels just as important to remember the man and the person who knew him best. Not just the story but the characters who stayed to see it through to the end.
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Activists rally for Andry Hernández Romero in front of Supreme Court
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