Local
From the ashes, a new Blade
1 year later, details emerge in former parent company’s collapse
Blade publisher Lynne Brown, with mic, speaks at a Blade re-launch party in April. Co-owner and editor Kevin Naff is at left. The paper had continued publishing since it was shuttered last November but used the name DC Agenda for a few months. (Blade file photo)
The U.S. Small Business Administration filed a court motion last December giving its approval of a bankruptcy filing by Window Media, the company that owned the Washington Blade, resulting in the shutdown of the Blade after a 40-year run as an LGBT newspaper, according to court documents.
But in an unexpected turn of events, the dissolution of Window Media through its Chapter 7 bankruptcy wiped out its enormous debt to creditors, clearing the way for Blade employees to form a new company that purchased the Blade’s name and remaining assets from the bankruptcy court debt-free and at a bargain price.
One year after the Blade shutdown on Nov. 16, 2009, and six months after its resurrection, court documents and new information disclosed by sources familiar with Window and its parent company, Avalon Equity Fund, provide a dramatic glimpse into the final days of a collapsing gay media conglomerate.
Among the revelations was the dismaying discovery by the Blade’s new owners that the paper’s electronic archives — which made all of its content going back to about 2001 accessible online — were erased after Window stopped paying its bills to a company that stored the data on rented servers.
“Like any customer, they were delinquent in their payment,” said Kevin Soendker, chief operating officer of the Natick, Mass., based Inet Services. “The service was cancelled and the servers were repurposed,” he said, acknowledging that the data was erased.
The Blade’s new owner, Brown Naff Pitts Omnimedia, Inc., announced this week that it is launching non-profit foundation to raise money to pay for digitizing all back issues of the Blade and to make them accessible to the public.
Although the electronic archives were erased, all printed copies of the Blade going back to its first issue in October 1969 have been preserved and are in the Blade’s possession.
Also emerging within the past week are separate accounts by a top SBA official and Window’s former co-president and chief operating officer, Mike Kitchens, of frantic, behind-the-scenes discussions last summer and fall over whether the Blade and other newspapers owned by Window should be sold to bidders — including a group of former Blade employees — or whether the company should be dissolved in bankruptcy.
Thomas Morris, director of the SBA’s Office of Liquidation, said the SBA played no role in Window’s ultimate decision to declare bankruptcy. But he said the SBA joined Window in filing a Dec. 10, 2009 stipulated motion before a federal court in New York asking the court to retroactively agree to the bankruptcy that Window filed 20 days earlier in Atlanta.
The SBA’s involvement with Avalon and Window stems from its decision in 2008 to obtain a court order forcing Avalon Equity Fund into receivership after Avalon defaulted on $38 million in loans from the SBA. With the SBA placed in full control of Avalon through the receivership ordered by the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, SBA also played a key role in Window’s affairs. Avalon, then under the control of the SBA, owned 75 percent of total equity in Window Media.
U.S. District Court Judge Peter K. Leisure included in his original Avalon receivership order, which he handed down Aug. 21, 2008, a directive that neither Avalon nor any of its assets, including companies it controlled, could declare bankruptcy without the court’s advance approval. Leisure approved the Dec. 10, 2009 motion backed by the SBA, clearing the way for the Window bankruptcy to move forward.
The bankruptcy and sudden shutdown of the Blade and several other publications owned by Window Media stunned the Blade staff and the D.C. gay community. Blade publisher Lynne Brown, who is part of the group that bought the Blade’s assets from the bankruptcy court, said she and the Blade’s managers and staff learned of the Avalon receivership in August 2008.
She said SBA officials working on the Avalon receivership told her in early 2009 the SBA was taking steps to sell Avalon’s and Window’s assets and publications, including the Blade. A short time later, Brown joined the Blade’s editor, Kevin Naff and senior sales executive Brian Pitts to form a group that submitted a bid to buy the Blade out of receivership.
The SBA organized the bidding process on Window’s behalf and encouraged others to submit bids. Among those who submitted a competing bid was gay rights advocate Nicholas Benton, publisher of the Falls Church, Va., News Press.
Benton, like Brown and Naff, expressed shock and anger when Window announced on Nov. 16, 2009 that it was declaring bankruptcy and shutting down all of its operations rather than sell its papers through the SBA bidding process.
The shutdown immediately eliminated the jobs of the Blade’s 24-member staff. In a development that drew extensive media coverage, Window co-presidents Kitchens and Steve Meyers appeared at the Blade’s offices in the National Press Building on Monday morning, Nov. 16, to announce the shutdown. The two directed all employees to retrieve their personal possessions, clear out their desks, and leave the premises by 3 p.m. that day when the office was to be shuttered.
Before leaving, however, most employees joined Brown, Naff and Pitts in vowing to band together to form a new publication — with the first fledgling edition to come that Friday, just four days later, when the Blade would have hit the streets had it not been shut down.
“We wanted to show the world we weren’t going away and that we could produce a paper without missing a beat,” Naff said.
Displaced Blade staff planning an early issue of DC Agenda at temporary office space above Results on U Street last December. From left are Lou Chibbaro, former news editor Joshua Lynsen and Kevin Naff. (Blade file photo)
Not knowing if they would ever be able to obtain the Blade’s name, the staff met the following morning at a café in the National Press Building lobby to plan a new paper, which they decided to name the DC Agenda.
While Naff and the now volunteer reporters and editors planned stories for the new paper, Brown and Pitts scrambled to line up advertisers and a printer. To the surprise and acclaim of many in the LGBT community, the first edition of the eight-page newsletter-style DC Agenda appeared at many of the Blade’s distribution locations on Friday, Nov. 20.
In subsequent weeks and months, the Agenda expanded its pages and evolved into a tabloid newspaper similar to the Blade.
Meanwhile, Brown Naff Pitts Omnimedia, Inc., the company formed by the Blade’s former publisher, editor and sales executive, responded to an offer by the Window bankruptcy court for bids on the Blade’s assets, which included the Blade’s name.
“We didn’t know who or what we were up against,” Brown said.
She noted that the new company was seeking investors and advertisers but didn’t have a huge amount of capital to compete with a large company or wealthy individual that might submit a competing bid.
As it turned out, no one else submitted a bid. Media observers said the economic recession and the longstanding decline in the print media industry may have discouraged investors from seeking to buy and restart the Blade. In addition, with the Blade’s former staff having started a new D.C. LGBT community newspaper, the Agenda, the value of buying the Blade’s assets — consisting only of used office equipment, the paper’s printed archives and its name — may not have been appealing to investors or other potential buyers, according to some media industry observers.
The lack of competing bids resulted in Brown Naff Pitts Omnimedia obtaining the Blade assets for $15,000.
Morris, the SBA’s liquidation office director, disclosed this week that the Buffalo, N.Y., based M&T Bank may have been responsible for scuttling the initial plans by the SBA and Window to sell its assets rather than go the route of bankruptcy.
When the financially troubled Window defaulted on a loan of close to $1.3 million from M&T, the bank became the No. 1 secured creditor or lien holder, Morris said. In that role, M&T would not agree to a proposal by the SBA that it initiate a foreclosure on Window Media, a legal status that would allow a potential buyer of any of Window’s assets like the Blade to be free from liability for Window’s debts.
An interested party would still be allowed to buy the Blade but they would most likely decline to do so if they had to assume Window’s debt, Morris said.
“Once that fell through, we had no viable alternative plan, and without one we would not have won a challenge to the bankruptcy filing,” Morris told the Blade in an e-mail.
The SBA could have asked the receivership judge to stop the bankruptcy and, as a federal district court judge, he likely had authority to do so, Morris said.
“But our conclusion at that time was that M&T was owed more than the company was worth,” Morris said.
He said that meant that no other creditors, including Avalon, which was Window’s largest creditor, would recoup any funds through the sale of Window’s assets. Window owed Avalon close to $5 million.
Thus he said the receivership judge would most likely have rejected an SBA motion to challenge the Window bankruptcy.
Kitchens said resignations of members of Window’s board of directors resulted in just he and Window co-president Steve Meyers as the only remaining board members during the months prior to the bankruptcy filing. According to Kitchens, the company’s operating rules required at least three board members for a quorum to make any important decisions such as the sale of assets.
He said the SBA could have named someone to the board, which may have allowed the board to vote to approve the sale of the Blade and other papers to those who had submitted bids before the bankruptcy filing.
“They should have taken places on the board, but they didn’t,” he said of the SBA.
Morris disputed that assertion, noting that Kitchens and Myers managed to approve the bankruptcy. He said he is not aware of any reason why they couldn’t have found a board member to approve a sale of the assets if they wanted to pursue that option.
As the SBA proceeded with receivership, it reached out to potential buyers, including Chris Crain and William Waybourn, who founded Window Media in 1996. The two left Window Media in 2006 in a shakeup of the company by Avalon’s founder and chief operating officer David Unger, who secured full control of Window in 2001.
Crain said the SBA never responded to his and Waybourn’s request for financial information about the company; they declined to submit a bid.
Lynne Brown addresses Blade staffers in a coffee shop in downtown Washington the day after Window Media closed the paper last November. (Blade file photo by Joey DiGuglielmo)
Blade’s fate tied to Window’s rise and fall
Waybourn and Crain’s interest in returning as Blade owners would likely have created an uproar among some gay activists and media commentators, who blame the two for setting in motion the events that led to the Blade’s demise.
The two strongly dispute those claims, saying the fall of Window Media and the gay newspapers and glossy entertainment publications the company acquired over the years was due to circumstances beyond their control.
Crain, a lawyer in private practice, joined Waybourn, a gay activist and businessman, in founding Window Media in 1996. The two have said their intent was to create an LGBT newspaper chain that would strengthen LGBT publications through the economic benefit of consolidation of resources.
Critics, however, have said consolidation of LGBT publications under ownership of a single company hurt the community by eliminating a diversity of voices and independent regional news coverage.
The company’s first move was the 1997 acquisition of Southern Voice, an Atlanta gay paper. In the next few years, Window bought gay papers in Houston and New Orleans and acquired smaller gay entertainment magazines in other cities.
The Blade, which was founded as the Gay Blade in 1969 by local gay activists, evolved from a fledgling newsletter style publication put together in the homes of its volunteer editors, into what many have called the LGBT community’s newspaper of record.
Gay activist and businessman Don Michaels, who became publisher in the late 1970s, has been credited with transforming the Blade into a thriving business as well as a well-respected news publication.
Window Media bought the Washington Blade and the New York Blade, which Michaels founded in the 1990s, in 2001, when Michaels made plans to sell the papers and retire. All parties declined to disclose the sale price, but sources have said it exceeded $3 million.
Chris Crain, right, chats with Kevin Naff, left, and Lou Chibbaro in the Blade newsroom in 2009. Crain was no longer associated with the paper at the time but came to see the then-new offices at the National Press Club. (Blade file photo by Joey DiGuglielmo)
Crain said this week that although Window Media had been financed by many small investors, it hooked up with Avalon Equity Fund — a multimillion dollar investment company — to provide the main financing for the purchase of the Washington Blade and New York Blade. He said the financing arrangement made Avalon the majority shareholder in Window Media at the time of the closing of the sale of the two Blades in May 2001.
But he noted that while Avalon had legal control of Window at that time, it allowed Crain and Waybourn to run the company and make all key decisions up until January 2006, when Waybourn left the company. At that time, Avalon’s founder and managing partner, David Unger, named one of his top Avalon lieutenants, Peter Polimino, as Waybourn’s replacement as Window president.
In September 2006, Crain left the company, amid speculation that both he and Waybourn had been ousted by Unger over sharp disagreements on how the company and its newspapers should be run.
Waybourn stated at the time of his departure that he decided to retire after completing what he said was the creation and operation of a successful LGBT newspaper chain. Sources familiar with Window, however, said Waybourn left the company due to irreconcilable disagreements with Unger over Unger’s management style and plans for acquiring more publications at the risk of assuming greater debt.
Crain said it was his decision to leave the company over a dispute that arose over Avalon’s decision to abolish Crain’s position of editorial director of all the Window publications and to hire individual editors at each of the Window papers.
Waybourn, who declined to comment this week on Window’s finances, has said in the past that the company acquired more debt than it had planned for over circumstances beyond its control. He noted that the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon led to a sharp drop in advertising sales due to a slump in the economy.
He noted that a decision by Blade employees to attempt to form an employee union the week Window assumed ownership of the Blade forced Window to spend at least $100,000 to fight the union. The union effort failed after a tense campaign and employee election supervised by the National Labor Relations Board.
The union fight was followed by the start of the current economic recession that further cut into Window’s revenue from advertising sales, Waybourn said at the time.
All of this made it necessary for Window to obtain additional cash infusions from Avalon, which resulted in Avalon increasing its ownership share of Window until it reached a 75 percent equity level, company sources have said.
The sources say Waybourn insists Window remained profitable despite these developments as of the time Waybourn left the company in 2006.
Unger declined to comment for this story when contacted by the Blade.
The SBA receivership documents filed in federal court in New York, where Avalon was based, show that the multimillion dollar investment company went into financial decline due to the failure of many of the media and cable TV companies it helped to finance in the years leading to 2008, when it defaulted on a series of loans the SBA extended to it that exceeded $38 million.
Under receivership, the SBA is charged with liquidating all of Avalon’s remaining assets.
The SBA’s Morris said Unger was ousted from his position as Avalon’s CEO in August 2008, when the SBA assumed full control under the receivership. But Morris said the SBA retained Unger as a paid member of Window Media’s board of directors up until June 2009, when he resigned from that post.
Gay rights attorney Bill Dobbs of New York, a longtime observer of the LGBT press, said Window Media’s decision to file for bankruptcy and close the papers it owned had an impact on the broader LGBT community.
“Gay newspapers are not just businesses — they’re a circulatory system for news, information and political discussion,” he said. “Even in the Internet age they play a key role. Perfectly solid local newspapers were gobbled up by Window Media who claimed bigger was better. They were wrong as some of us warned,” Dobbs said. “Concentrated ownership of media in a minority community has special perils. Window/Avalon dragged all those papers down to failure — a community disaster.”
Waybourn, however, has said some of the papers Window sought to buy were faltering due to lack of resources by their community-based publishers. He said his objective — at the time he controlled Window — was to strengthen the local papers by pumping in resources.
Virginia
Va. court allows conversion therapy despite law banning it
Judge in June 30 ruling cited religious freedom.
In 2020, the state of Virginia had banned the practice of conversion therapy, but on Monday, a county judge ruled the ban violates the Virginia Constitution and Religious Freedom Restoration Act, allowing the therapy to start once more.
The conversion therapy ban, which can be seen in Va. Code § 54.1-2409.5 and 18VAC115-20-130.14, was overturned on June 30 as a result of two Christian counselors who argued that their — and all Virginia parents’ — constitutional right to freedom of religion had been encroached upon when the state legislature passed the ban.
A Henrico County Circuit Court judge sided with John and Janet Raymond, two Christian counselors represented by the Founding Freedoms Law Center, a conservative organization founded in 2020 following Virginia’s conversion therapy ban. Virginia’s Office of the Attorney General entered a consent decree with FFLC, saying state officials will not discipline counselors who engage in talk conversion therapy.
Conversion therapy, as the legislation described it, is considered to be “any practice or treatment that seeks to change an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity, including efforts to change behaviors or gender expressions or to eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward individuals of the same gender.” The ban’s reversal will now allow parents to subject their children to these practices to make them align better with their religion.
This decision comes despite advice and concern from many medical and pediatric organizations — including the American Psychiatric Association, American Psychological Association, American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, and the American Counseling Association, to name a few — all of which denounce conversion therapy as dangerous and harmful to those subjected to it.
The American Medical Association, the largest and only national association that convenes more than 190 state and specialty medical societies, says that “these techniques are the assumption that any non-heterosexual, non-cisgender identities are mental disorders, and that sexual orientation and gender identity can and should be changed. This assumption is not based on medical and scientific evidence,” with attached data indicating people subjected to conversion therapy are more likely to develop “significant long-term harm” as a result of the therapy.
The AMA goes as far as to say that they outright “oppose the use of reparative or conversion therapy for sexual orientation or gender identity.”
FFLC has a clear goal of promoting — if not requiring — conservative ideology under the guise of religious freedom in the Virginia General Assembly. On their website, the FFLC argues that some progressive policies passed by the Assembly, like that of freedom from conversion therapy, are a violation of some Virginians’ “God-given foundational freedoms.”
The FFLC has argued that when conservative notions are not abided by in state law — especially when it involves “God’s design for male and female, the nuclear family, and parental rights” — that the law violates Virginians’ religious freedom.
A statement on the FFLC’s website calls gender dysphoria among children a “contagion” and upholds “faith-based insights” from counselors as equal — in the eyes of the law — to those who use medical-based insights. This, once again, is despite overwhelming medical evidence that indicates conversion therapy is harmful.
One study showed that 77 percent of those who received “sexual orientation change efforts,” or conversion therapy, experienced “significant harm.” This harm includes depression, anxiety, lowered self-esteem, and internalized homophobia. In addition, the study found that young LGBTQ adults with high levels of parental or caregiver rejection are “8.4 times more likely to report having attempted suicide,” with another study finding that “nearly 30 percent of individuals who underwent SOCE reported suicidal attempts.”
Virginia Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, a Democrat representing Fairfax, said that the overturning of the ban on religious merit disregards the entire concept of having professionally licensed counselors.
“I have no problem if somebody wants to go look at religious counseling from their priest or their minister, their rabbi, their imam — that’s perfectly fine,” Surovell told the Virginia Mercury. “When somebody goes to get therapy from somebody licensed by the commonwealth of Virginia, there’s a different set of rules applied. You can’t just say whatever you want because you have a license. That’s why we have professional standards, that’s why we have statutes.”
District of Columbia
GenOUT Chorus offers solace, strength to LGBTQ teens
Summer camp held from June 23-27
As Pride month draws to a close and Washington begins to take down its rainbow flags and WorldPride decorations, it can be easy to confine the ideas of LGBTQ liberation to June. One historic organization in Washington has been speaking out — or singing out if you will — to ensure that LGBTQ youth are allowed to explore and be themselves every month of the year.
The Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington is one of the oldest and largest LGBTQ choruses in the world. With more than 300 members and more than 40 years in the D.C. LGBTQ community, to say it is an institution would be an understatement.
Beginning in 1981, following an inspiring performance by the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus at the Kennedy Center, a group of 18 gay men — led by a “straight” woman and friend of Washington’s gay community, Marsha Pearson — created the GMCW. Since its establishment the organization has only grown in number and relevance within the city. From hosting multiple concerts a year, international equality trips, and creating a dedicated space to “inspire equality and inclusion with musical performances and education,” the GMCW is one of the cornerstone organizations in the Washington LGBTQ community.
One of the most remarkable parts of the GMCW is its youth outreach program and choir: GenOUT. The outreach ensemble specializes in providing a space for Washington’s LGBTQ and allied youth, ages 13-18, to find their voice through song and connect that voice to community. The GenOUT program has been around since 2001, and since 2015 has provided a platform for their voices to be heard — literally — making it the first LGBTQ youth chorus in the Washington area.
The Washington Blade sat down with GenOUT Director C. Paul Heins and member Ailsa Ostovitz to discuss why GenOUT, and more specifically the GenOUT summer camp, which was held from June 23-27, has become an essential space for LGBTQ youth in the D.C. area to find their voice amid less-than-supportive administration and rising anti-LGBTQ rhetoric in the nation.
“This is my 11th season with GenOUT, and also the 11th season with Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington,” Heins said when explaining how he ended up in the director role for the self-selected, no audition required youth outreach ensemble. “I was hired in August of 2014 to start GenOUT. I spent that first fall researching other choruses, figuring out the infrastructure, promoting the chorus, and building relationships with schools, organizations, and faith communities. And then we started in January of 2015 with nine brave singers and since then, we’ve had 150+ singers from 80 or more schools in the DMV participate.”
Ailsa Ostovitz, on the other hand, being in high school had not had as much experience with choirs — yet her commitment and unwavering passion for the work she — and the other performers within GenOUT provide to each other was unmistakable.
“I’ve been a part of the course since April of 2022, and that was like seventh grade— which is wild to think about,” Ostovitz said when reflecting on how long she had been a part of GenOUT. She explained how she had begun to develop a drive for filling leadership roles within GenOUT after gaining valuable experiences and education from the organization.
“This is my first year in leadership,” she added. “The rest of the years, I kind of hung back. I really wanted to — especially last season — kind of put myself in the position of a peer and think ‘What would I want from people that are supposed to represent me to the adults? What would I want out of that?’”
And with those questions in mind, Ostovitz explained she buckled down and worked hard to get to where she is now as a member of the leadership team within the GenOUT choir.
“I spent a lot of time working with my section leader, and, looking up at him and being like, ‘What are you doing now that I can do in the future?’ And so this year, I ran for leadership,” Ostovitz said. “I got section leader, and that was cool. I’ve just spent a lot of time — most of my time in this course — learning leadership skills to kind of help me in all sorts of things in life, because I like to take control of things, and I like doing stuff.”
These leadership skills are just a handful of the things that students like Ostovitz learn while participating in the program. This year’s theme was “Make Them Hear Us!: Empowering LGBTQ+ and Allied Youth Through Music, Media, and Community,” and provided multiple opportunities for GenOUT’s members to engage with new concepts, ideas, and experiences.
From field trips to mentoring opportunities to an end-of-camp performance, it becomes clear when speaking to those familiar with the GenOUT experience: it is not your traditional summer day camp.
“The title of the camp references the anthem that GMCW has sung for many years,” Heins said. “‘Make Them Hear You’ from the musical ‘Ragtime’ encourages us to share important stories — stories that honor the fights that we’ve been fighting, the rights that we have won, affirmations that we seek for every human being, and the focus on media — specifically developing young people’s understandings of the kinds of media that they can access and use to share their voice.”
The camp offers singing and dancing lessons, creative writing exercises, LGBTQ+ history lessons, and open discussions about identity — providing an outlet for students to figure out who they want to be and find their voice.
“What this camp does, I believe, is it helps foster young people’s voices and not only encourages them to speak, but to give them the skills to speak in a way that will be heard meaningfully,” Heins added. “I have noted that youth in queer choruses like GenOUT have said that singing in a chorus allows young people to express themselves more honestly and with greater passion than other forms of expression. They’ve also said that singing with others that understand you on a very deep, profound level, makes the expression much easier and more beautiful. I think that experience is what really makes this a special opportunity for young, LGBTQ and allied people.”
Ostovitz echoed Heins’s sentiment, emphasizing that the space GenOUT provides allows her to feel empowered in ways more than by creating leadership skills that will help her later in life. GenOUT has allowed for her to see the humanity and similarities LGBTQ youth all face in a straight world.
“Joining the chorus and being in this camp, it really gives people a chance to see that every person is going through the same experience you are, on a level of finding your own identity and being confident in that,” Ostovitz said. “It really, really serves a purpose by showing there are still queer people. They’re not fizzling out — young people are queer. We want to use our voices to express what we feel and how things are affecting us, and I think that using music to do that is probably one of the most powerful ways to do that.”
In addition to allowing for internal growth and honing their singing abilities, both Ostovitz and Heins pointed out the other valuable skills students learn while in the GenOUT program. Ostovitz explicitly highlighted the mentorship program GenOUT has with GMCW, and how it has helped students like her figure out their future.
“Because we are so connected with GMCW, we run a mentorship program where, if you want to explore career, identity, whatever, we can connect you with somebody from GMCW,” Ostovitz said. “You get to spend a whole semester with a person working on your voice or your career or your what you want to do in higher education. It’s not only for things related to your queer identity, but it’s also just for life. It’s really cool.”
This year’s theme, centering around media and the many ways people can share their voice, was highlighted through the camp’s field trips to two legacy media organizations — WAMU and NBC Washington — and a discussion with staff from the Washington Blade, including Publisher Lynne Brown and International News Editor Michael K. Lavers.
“GenOUT provides a chance to get to know people from all around this area, but it also connects you to older folks, It connects you to people from the past, as well as we learn about LGBTQ history,” Heins said. “I think a camp specific thing is we want young people to understand how they can share their stories beyond just talking to their friends. There are these forms of media that are out there to share your stories, to have your voices heard, and to have a sense that these media are there for everyone. It’s not just a thing for people aged 21 and over. That was something that Lynne and Michael from the Blade were sharing with; that anyone can write in a letter to the editor. It doesn’t mean it’s going to be published, but that anyone has that opportunity. And I think that’s a great way for them to say the Blade is open to you to share your voice.”
The concept that there are people who want to, or may need to hear queer voices represented is one that is not lost on Ostovitz.
“There is something Thea says that has kind of integrated into our chorus — that someone out there needed to hear you, needed to hear your voice, needed to hear your story,” Ostovitz said. “That’s something that I kind of live by in this chorus, where I’m like, ‘I believe that there is someone out there that needed to hear this song for whatever reason, whatever it did for them. And I’m hoping to learn how much more can this chorus do for not just our little community, but how much more can it do around the world or the country — especially now.”
Living in the political center of the U.S., Ostovitz explained, has impacted how she approaches her identity, her education, and the urgency of using her voice — both as a student and as a young queer person navigating an increasingly hostile national climate.
“Being so close to the political center of the country and also a student at the same time has not been the easiest thing in the world as of late,” she said. “You’re thinking a lot about ‘Oh, I wonder if this program in my school will still exist next year,’ because a lot of the funding for physics and science programs in general has been cut. So I’m fortunate enough that Maryland has been pretty good about going against this administration. And so being in this chorus gives me a second to step back from my academics and just go somewhere for the two hours of rehearsal.”
For Ostovitz, just having those two short hours a week to focus on music — without thinking about the political climate that paints her and her choir peers as nefarious for being LGBTQ — provides solace.
“Everybody else is going through the same thing as I am, but we’re all also working towards the same goal, which is acceptance and uplifting of everybody and everyone — no matter who they are,” she said. “It kind of settles you down and grounds you. And then you just make music with people, and it’s really like a stress reducer for me.”
“Is it too trite to say that that would make people feel less alone, knowing that it’s not just a DMV thing, but that there are queer people all over?” Heins asked Ostovitz.
“No, it’s not — for sure,” Ostovitz responded. “It was a bit eye-opening.”
“A lot of us are fortunate enough to have families that support us enough to trust us and help us be passionate and mean what we do with the work that we do in this chorus — because it is optional,” Ostovitz added. “It is optional to have the courage that we have to practice and commit as much as we do, and the fact that we have a whole organization backing us on that is pretty cool.”
“We often say that we sing for those who can’t sing in a chorus like ours,” Heins said. “We sing for people who don’t have the freedom or the option to live their authentic lives. I think that’s very powerful.”
“It’s a very unique experience to be surrounded by so many people that get it,” Ostovitz said. “It’s a very joyful experience when we perform our big shows at the Lincoln Theater, being part of that production is also a very unique experience. So I think everything about this chorus is very joyfully unique.”
“I feel very proud, and I feel very inspired,” Heins said. “I feel inspired by the young voices. I feel a sense of inspiration in my own music-making, when I am able to take a piece from its very beginning all the way to the stage in a polished form. And I feel that sense of pride in knowing that I’ve helped this group of young people develop their confidence to do really amazing things.”
“GenOUT sang 22 times last year, which for any chorus is a big deal, but for a youth chorus coming from thither and yon, it is really a big deal,” Heins added. “I’m just really inspired and proud, and know that when I am in a nursing home somewhere and these folks are still out working and I know the country will be in good hands.”
Virginia
Walkinshaw wins Democratic primary in Va. 11th Congressional District
Special election winner will succeed Gerry Connolly
On Saturday, Fairfax County Supervisor James Walkinshaw won the Democratic primary for the special election that will determine who will represent Virginia’s 11th Congressional District.
The special election is being held following the death of the late Congressman Gerry Connolly, who represented the district from 2008 until 2024, when he announced his retirement, and subsequently passed away from cancer in May.
Walkinshaw is not unknown to Virginia’s 11th District — he has served on the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors since 2020 and had served as Connolly’s chief of staff from 2009 to 2019. Before he passed away, Connolly had endorsed Walkinshaw to take his place, claiming that choosing Walkinshaw to be his chief of staff was “one of the best decisions I ever made.”
The Democratic nominee has run his campaign on mitigating Trump’s “dangerous” agenda of dismantling the federal bureaucracy, which in the district is a major issue as many of the district’s residents are federal employees and contractors.
“I’m honored and humbled to have earned the Democratic nomination for the district I’ve spent my career serving,” Walkinshaw said on X. “This victory was powered by neighbors, volunteers, and supporters who believe in protecting our democracy, defending our freedoms, and delivering for working families.”
In addition to protecting federal workers, Walkinshaw has a long list of progressive priorities — some of which include creating affordable housing, reducing gun violence, expanding immigrant protections, and “advancing equality for all” by adding sexual orientation and gender identity to the Fair Housing Act.
Various democratic PACs contributed more than $2 million to Walkinshaw’s ad campaigns, much of which touted his connection to Connolly.
Walkinshaw will face Republican Stewart Whitson in the special election in September, where he is the likely favorite to win.
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