Local
Gay GOP donor helped fund ‘Hide/Seek’ exhibit
N.Y. businessman wants controversial crucifix video restored to Portrait Gallery
Editor’s note: a Blade review of the exhibit is here.
A gay Republican businessman from New York who led the fundraising campaign to underwrite the National Portrait Gallery’s gay exhibit “Hide/Seek” has added his voice to those calling on the gallery to reinstate a controversial video by the late gay artist David Wojnarowicz.
Donald Capoccia, a real estate developer who was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2001 to serve on the U.S. Commission on Fine Arts, and his partner, Tommie Pegues, sent a letter this week to the head of the Smithsonian Institution requesting that the video be “returned to the exhibition floor, without fail, and as soon as possible.”
The role of Capoccia and other gay donors who helped fund the exhibit has been overshadowed by a series of events beginning Dec. 1, when National Portrait Gallery director Martin Sullivan removed the Wojnarowicz video from the exhibit.
Sullivan said he acted in response to complaints by the Catholic League and Republican members of Congress that an 11-second segment of the video, which showed ants crawling over a crucifix, was offensive and an anti-Christian slur.
“I regret that some reports about the exhibit have created an impression that the video is intentionally sacrilegious,” Sullivan said in a statement. “In fact, the artist’s intention was to depict the suffering of an AIDS victim. It was not the intention of the museum to offend. We have removed the video.”
News of Sullivan’s decision, which surfaced on World AIDS Day, prompted an outcry among gay and AIDS activists and leaders of the arts community, who denounced the action as a form of censorship.
Sullivan told the New York Times he was sympathetic to the activists and artists who decried the decision to pull the video. He said his decision, which he said had the support of the leaders of the Smithsonian Institution, was aimed at quelling a “distraction” from the overall exhibit, which features important works from leading gay and lesbian artists.
The National Portrait Gallery is an arm of the Smithsonian Institution, which, among other things, operates the federally funded museums in the nation’s capital.
Among those who criticized the video and the exhibit itself were Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), who will become Speaker of the House in January, and Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), who will become majority leader at the same time, when Republicans assume control of the House.
Rep. James Moran (D-Va.), whose district includes the Northern Virginia suburbs just outside D.C., said Boehner and Cantor along with other Republicans were exploiting an exhibit, in which just 11 seconds of a single video was offensive to some, for political gain.
Cantor said his concern was that the Smithsonian Institution, of which the National Portrait Gallery is a part, was using government funds to pay for an exhibit that was highly offensive to many Americans.
Cantor and other critics of the exhibit dismissed assertions by Smithsonian officials that private donors picked up the cost of the exhibit, saying taxpayer funds are used for the upkeep of the building and to pay the salaries of Portrait Gallery employees who operate the exhibit.
The National Portrait Gallery has called the exhibit, “Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture,” the nation’s first major museum exhibition to “focus on sexual difference in the making of modern American portraiture.”
LGBT activists involved in the arts have said the exhibit also shows how gay artists, through their varied works, have grappled with anti-gay bias and prejudice against different forms of gender expression over the past century.
Phillip Clark, chair of the board of D.C.’s Rainbow History Project, called David Wojnarowicz, a gay man who died of AIDS in 1992, an important figure in the LGBT arts community. Clark noted that Wojnarowicz used ants in his video and still photography works as a symbol for depicting human suffering and injustice.
“The image of the Christ figure attacked by ants in ‘A Fire in My Belly’ [the name of the Wojnarowicz video pulled from the exhibit], far from being sacrilegious, is actually a commentary on the destructiveness of society toward AIDS patients in the 1980s,” Clark said.
D.C. gay rights advocate Charles Francis, who recruited former President Gerald Ford to become a board member of a national gay GOP group, the Republican Unity Coalition, before Francis left the Republican Party in 2004, called on the LGBT community to remain supportive of the Smithsonian.
Francis, who joined Capoccia in contributing money to the Hide/Seek exhibit, said he disagrees with the decision by the Portrait Gallery to remove the Wojnarowicz video. But he said the gallery and the Smithsonian as a whole have been supportive of LGBT-related projects in recent years.
“The Smithsonian is doing a great job step by step in expanding and including LGBT Americans in the stories they tell, in the collections they show,” he said. “I think it’s time for the gay community to rally around the Smithsonian.”
PHOTO: “Self-Portrait — Robert Mapplethorpe,” a 1975 Polaroid print, one of the images in the Hide/Seek exhibit at the National Portrait Gallery. Image courtesy of the Estate of Robert Mapplethorpe, New York City.
District of Columbia
Man arrested for destroying D.C. Pride decorations, spray painting hate message
Court records show prosecutors did not list offense as hate crime
D.C. police this week announced they have arrested a Maryland man on charges of Destruction of Property and Defacing Private Property for allegedly pulling down and ripping apart rainbow colored cloth Pride ornaments on light poles next to Dupont Circle Park on June 2.
In a June 10 statement police said the suspect, identified as Michel Isaiah Webb, Jr., 30, also allegedly spray painted an anti-LGBTQ message on the window of a private residence in the city’s Southwest waterfront neighborhood two days later on June 4.
An affidavit in support of the arrest filed by police in D.C. Superior Court on June 9 says Web was captured on a video surveillance camera spray painting the message “Fuck the LGBT+ ABC!” and “God is Real.” The affidavit does not say what Webb intended the letters “ABC” to stand for.
“Detectives located video and photos in both offenses and worked to identify the suspect,” the police statement says. “On Sunday, June 8, 2025, First District officers familiar with these offenses observed the suspect in Navy Yard and made an arrest without incident.”
The statement continues: “As a result of the detectives investigation, 30-year-old Michael Isaiah Webb, Jr. of Landover, Md. was charged with Destruction of Property and Defacing Private Property.”
It concludes by saying, “The Metropolitan Police Department is investigating this case as potentially being motivated by hate or bias. The designation can be changed at any point as the investigation proceeds, and more information is gathered. A designation as a hate crime by MPD does not mean that prosecutors will prosecute it as a hate crime.”
The online D.C. Superior Court docket for the case shows that prosecutors with the Office of the United States Attorney for D.C. charged Webb with just one offense – Defacing Public or Private Property.
The charging document filed by prosecutors, which says the offense was committed on June 4, declares that Webb “willfully and wantonly wrote, marked, drew, and painted a word, sign, or figure upon property, that is window(s), without the consent of Austin Mellor, the owner and the person lawfully in charge thereof.”
But the charging document does not designate the offense as a hate crime or bias motivated crime as suggested by D.C. police as a possible hate crime.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request from the Washington Blade for an explanation of why the office did not designate the offense as a hate crime and why it did not charge Webb in court with the second charge filed by D.C. police of destruction of Property for allegedly destroying the Pride decorations at Dupont Circle.
The online public court records show that at a June 9 court arraignment Webb pleaded not guilty and Superior Court Judge Robert J. Hildum released him while awaiting trial while issuing a stay-away order. The public court records do not include a copy of the stay-away order. The judge also ordered Webb to return to court for a June 24 status hearing, the records show.
The arrest affidavit filed by D.C. police says at the time of his arrest, Webb waived his right to remain silent. It says he claimed he knew nothing at all about the offenses he was charged with.
“However, Defendant 1 stated something to the effect of, ‘It’s not a violent crime’ several times during the interview” with detectives, according to the affidavit.
The charge filed against him by prosecutors of Defacing Public or Private Property is a misdemeanor that carries a possible maximum penalty of 180 days in jail and a fine up to $1,000.
Delaware
Delaware hosts LGBTQ flag raising ceremony
Gov. Matt Meyer declares June 2025 as Pride month
Delaware Gov. Matt Meyer hosted a flag raising ceremony and presented a proclamation marking June 2025 as Pride month on Tuesday.
The public event took place at 11 a.m. at Legislative Hall in Dover.
“For many, many years of our state’s history, coming out here and doing what we’re doing today would have been just about unimaginable,” Meyer said at the event. “Today, this is a symbol of all of the progress that we have all made together.”
Lieutenant Gov. Kyle Evans Gay, Sens. Dan Cruce, Russ Huxtable, and Marie Pinkney, Reps. Eric Morrison, Deshanna Neal, and Claire Snyder-Hall, and LGBTQ+ Commission Chair Cora Castle and Vice Chair Vienna Cavazos were in attendance, among others.
Last week, Meyer announced the members of a new LGBTQ+ commission, which will work with the state government to improve services in areas such as employment, equality, education, mental health, social services, health, and housing.
As Pride month continues, Delaware is currently considering an amendment to codify same-sex marriage in its Constitution.
“Today is about making history and raising this flag,” said Lt. Gov. Gay at the event. “Today is about charting a new course forward with our new commission and today is about marking how far we’ve come.”
District of Columbia
D.C. police investigating threat of shooting at WorldPride festival
Police chief says weekend was ‘success without incident’
D.C. Police Chief Pamela Smith said at a June 9 press conference that police investigators are looking for a man who reportedly threatened to “shoot up” the WordPride festival on Sunday, June 8, inside the fence-enclosed festival grounds.
Smith, who joined D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser at the press conference to discuss public safety issues, said aside from the shooting threat, WorldPride events took place “without an incident’ and called WorldPride 2025 D.C. a success.
“I think last evening at the festival footprint there was an individual inside the festival who said there was an individual who was there and that they were going to shoot up the place in some terminology they used,” Smith told news media reporters.
“As you know, the event went off without incident,” she said. “We did have appropriate resources down there to address it. We did put out a photo of the individual – white male. That’s all we have right now. But our team is working very diligently to find out who that individual is.”
Smith added that D.C. police made 15 arrests during the WorldPride weekend with at least 23 violent crimes that occurred across the city but which she said were not related to WorldPride.
“There was a lot going on,” she said. “But I’m so grateful we were able to have a WorldPride 2025 in this city that was very successful.”
In response to reporters’ questions, Bowser said she regretted that an incident of violence took place in Dupont Circle Park shortly after she persuaded the U.S. Park Service to reverse its earlier decision to close Dupont Circle Park during WorldPride weekend.
The mayor was referring to an incident early Saturday evening, June 7, in which two juveniles were stabbed inside the park following a fight, according to D.C. police. Police said the injuries were nonfatal.
Bowser noted that she agreed with community activists and nearby residents that Dupont Circle Park, which has been associated with LGBTQ events for many years, should not be closed during WorldPride.
Park Service officials have said their reason for closing the park was that acts of vandalism and violence had occurred there during past LGBTQ Pride weekends, even though LGBTQ Pride organizers have said the vandalism and violent acts were not associated with Pride events.
“I think if I were standing here this morning and we hadn’t opened up the park you would be asking me were there any requests for not pushing hard to have a D.C. park opened that’s important to the LGBT community during Pride,” Bowser told reporters.
“So, any time that there is harm to someone, and our responsibility, we regard it as our number one responsibility to keep the city safe and keep from harm’s way, certainly I have some regrets,” she said. “But I know I was working very hard to balance what our community was calling for with our preparations. And that was the decision I made,” she said, referring to her call to reopen Dupont Circle Park.
Bowser also noted that the National Park Service would not likely have agreed to reverse its decision to reopen Dupont Circle Park if an event had not been planned to take place there over the WorldPride weekend.
She was referring to a Saturday, June 7, D.C. Department of Parks and Recreation “DISCO” party in Dupont Circle Park, which took place after the decision to reopen the park.
“Step Outside, Feel The Beat, And Shine With Pride,” a flyer announcing the event states.
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