Local
YEAR IN REVIEW: D.C. marriage law makes history
A look at the top 10 local stories of the year
The year 2010 saw same-sex couples legally marry for the first time in D.C. Angelisa Young and Sinjhoyla Townsend were among the first to wed. (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)
#1 Same-sex couples marry in D.C.
A long line of same-sex couples snaked its way through a corridor at the D.C. Superior Court’s Marriage Bureau on March 3, the first day the couples could apply for a marriage license under the city’s Religious Freedom and Marriage Equality Amendment Act.
The Act was approved by the City Council and signed by Mayor Adrian Fenty in December 2009, making D.C. the sixth jurisdiction in the country to legalize same-sex marriage. The weddings began in March following the completion of a required congressional review of the law.
Under the watchful eye of nearly two-dozen television cameras and news photographers, two lesbian couples and a gay male couple were among the first same-sex couples to wed—in ceremonies held at the Human Rights Campaign headquarters.
“Today was like a dream for me,” said Angelisa Young, 47, minutes after her wedding to Sinjhoyla Townsend, 41, her partner of 12 years.
“I always felt like it would come true. But it’s here now, and it’s really real,” she said. “We want to thank everyone who made this possible.”
Opponents of same-sex marriage, led by Maryland minister Harry Jackson, lost a series of court challenges seeking to force the city to hold a voter referendum on whether the law should be overturned. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to decide in January whether accept or reject Jackson’s final appeal on the question of whether the city should be forced to hold the referendum.
#2 Fenty loses to Gray
Mayor Adrian Fenty lost his re-election bid to City Council chair Vincent Gray in the city’s Sept. 14 Democratic primary. Although the two candidates each have a strong record of support on LGBT issues, including support for the same-sex marriage law, Gray received the strong backing of most LGBT organizations and activists.
Like other constituency groups, a number of LGBT leaders said Fenty appeared to have lost touch with the needs and concerns of the LGBT community. They noted that he declined to speak out, for example, on the growing number of anti-LGBT hate crimes and rarely attended LGBT events or meetings.
But election returns showed that Fenty beat Gray in nearly all voter precincts where large numbers of gays live such as Dupont Circle, Adams Morgan, Logan Circle and Capitol Hill. Areas where high concentrations of black gays live voted overwhelmingly for Gray, highlighting the city-wide racial divide in the election, with blacks voting mostly for Gray and whites voting mostly for Fenty.
#3 Principal Brian Betts murdered
The murder in April of highly acclaimed D.C. middle school principal Brian Betts, who was gay, by a 19-year-old man he met though an Internet chat line for men interested in sex with men drew extensive media attention.
Three of the four youths charged in the case — three 19 and one 18 at the time of the incident — have pleaded guilty through plea bargain offers by prosecutors in Montgomery County, Md., where Betts was shot to death in his house on April 15. Nineteen-year-old Alante Saunders, who admitted he shot Betts accidentally during a robbery, was sentenced to 40 years in jail.
Saunders acknowledged to police that he hatched a plan to meet someone on the chat line for the purpose of robbing them, a disclosure that created alarm in the gay community over potential danger of meeting sex partners online.
Two attorneys representing Betts’ family have called on the U.S. Justice Department to investigate whether Saunders should be charged under the Matthew Shepard federal hate crimes law.
“Brian was a gay man and we believe an investigation should be opened under that law to determine whether a hate crime has or has not been committed,” said attorney Gloria Allred.
#4 Md. elects 7 out gays; Beyer loses race
Seven openly gay candidates – four incumbents and three newcomers – were elected to the Maryland Legislature in November, boosting chances that the legislature will pass a same-sex marriage law in 2011.
Meanwhile, Dana Beyer, a retired eye surgeon and political activist, lost her bid to become the first transgender person elected to the Maryland Legislature. Beyer ran for a seat in the House of Delegates from a district in Montgomery County.
Among the winners were gay incumbents Richard Madeleno, a member of the State Senate; and lesbian House of Delegates members Anne Kaiser, Heather Mizeur and Maggie McIntosh. Among the challengers to win was Mary Washington, who captured a seat in the House of Delegates from Baltimore, becoming the first black lesbian to be elected to the Maryland Legislature and just the second black lesbian to win a seat in a state legislature in the U.S.
Lesbian Bonnie Cullison and gay candidate Luke Clippinger each won seats in the House of Delegates. All seven are Democrats.
#5 Not guilty verdict in Wone case
Three gay men charged with obstruction of justice, conspiracy to obstruct justice, and evidence tampering in connection with the 2006 murder of D.C. attorney Robert Wone were found not guilty of the charges in June following a sensational trial.
In a development that stunned courtroom spectators and Wone’s family members, D.C. Superior Court Judge Lynn Leibovitz said it was “very probable” that defendants Joseph Price, Victor Zaborsky and Dylan Ward engaged in a massive cover-up of the murder and know the identity of Wone’s killer, as asserted by prosecutors.
But she said the government failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the men committed the offenses with which they were charged, forcing her to issue a not-guilty verdict in the non-jury trial. The defendants waived their right to a jury trial.
They are now scheduled to for a second trial in a $20 million wrongful death lawsuit that Wone’s wife and family members filed against them, which is expected to begin in the spring.
They have claimed an unknown intruder killed Wone after entering their upscale townhouse near Dupont Circle, where Wone was spending the night after working late in his nearby office. Wone, whose wife said he was straight, had been longtime friends with the three defendants.
Police and prosecutors argued there was no evidence of a break-in at the house and an autopsy showed Wone appeared to have been immobilized – possibly by a paralytic drug – before being stabbed three times in the chest.
#6 Md. recognizes out-of-state gay marriages
Maryland Attorney General Douglas Gansler issued a long-awaited legal opinion in February saying same-sex marriages performed in other states and countries most likely would have full legal standing in Maryland.
But in his 53-page opinion, Gansler said the Maryland Court of Appeals would have the final say in the matter if opponents of same-sex marriage decide to contest the legal standing of married same-sex couples living in or visiting the state.
Gansler’s opinion was hailed by LGBT activists and gay couples, who said they planned to marry in D.C. beginning in March, when the District’s same-sex marriage law took effect. But outraged opponents of same-sex marriage vowed to contest the Gansler opinion, and some called on the state legislature to impeach him over the issue.
Nearly a year after Gansler issued his opinion, it remained unclear whether same-sex married couples in the state have encountered problems with state agencies in receiving the same marriage-related benefits afforded opposite-sex married couples.
#7 GLOV calls for attention to hate crimes
The D.C. group Gays and Lesbians Opposing Violence (GLOV) says 2010 marked yet another year in which LGBT people were the victims in more than 70 percent of the total number of hate crimes reported in the District.
The LGBT community became alarmed earlier in the year when D.C. police issued an alert about nearly a half-dozen anti-gay assaults occurring near gay bars in the Dupont Circle and Logan Circle areas. In one case, a group of teenage males and females assaulted a gay man walking on P Street near Dupont Circle while shouting anti-gay names.
With teenagers and young adults emerging as the perpetrators in most of the anti-LGBT hate crimes, GLOV and other activists groups have called on the city’s public school system to increase diversity awareness programs foster better understanding of LGBT people.
#8 Trans woman claims assault by D.C. cop
Transgender activists have said D.C. police may have violated policies for addressing the transgender community in a Dec. 1 incident in which a transgender woman said she was assaulted by an off-duty police officer.
Chloe Alexander Moore, 25, was arrested on a charge of assault for spraying a chemical repellent into the face of Officer Raphael Radon. Radon was dressed in civilian clothes and, according to Moore, assaulted her after calling her names, leading her to believe she was in imminent danger. She said she squirted Radon with pepper spray in self-defense and did not know he was a police officer.
Two police sources told the Blade that a detective and sergeant who responded to the scene and interviewed witnesses initially determined that Radon started the altercation and he rather than Moore appeared to have committed an assault.
But police and court records show the two were overruled by a captain, who was not on the scene but was consulted by phone.
#9 Washington Blade re-launches
The Washington Blade resumed publishing as a local, independently owned newspaper in April after a November 2009 bankruptcy filing by its parent company, Window Media, forced it to shut down after 40 years of service as an LGBT publication.
Blade staff members, with the help of local advertisers and community supporters, launched the D.C. Agenda newspaper to fill in for the Blade immediately after the Blade shutdown. Following months of preparation, publisher Lynne Brown, editor Kevin Naff, and sales executive Brian Pitts formed a new company that bought the Blade’s name and remaining assets from the bankruptcy court.
The purchase enabled the new company to resume using the Blade’s name. The company – Brown Naff Pitts Omnimedia — has since launched a non-profit foundation to raise money to digitize the Blade’s print archives, making all back issues dating back to 1969 available to the public online.
The existing electronic archives, which covered back issues beginning in the late 1990s, were destroyed shortly before or after the bankruptcy filing when Window Media failed to pay a web hosting company the monthly fees required to maintain and store the archives on a rented computer server.
#10 MTV’s ‘Real World’ showcases D.C.
D.C.’s gay community joined in the suspense and merriment in early 2010 when MTV’s reality series “Real World” premiered its “Real World: D.C.” episodes, which were filmed in the District in 2009.
Much of the filming took place in a Dupont Circle mansion, where the cast resided while they visited Washington’s historic sites as well as many nightlife venues. Cast member Mike Manning, who is bisexual, was filmed in some of the city’s gay bars and clubs and was followed by an MTV video crew when he attended the Oct. 2009 Human Rights Campaign dinner, in which President Obama was the keynote speaker.
MTV crews filmed another cast member at the Washington Blade’s then offices in the National Press Building as she worked as a Blade photographer.
District of Columbia
Adams Morgan queer bar broken into and vandalized
Sinners and Saints targeted Thursday night
On Thursday night, Sinners and Saints, a popular queer bar in Adams Morgan and the only QTBIPOC (queer, trans, Black, Indigenous and people of color) bar in D.C., was broken into and vandalized with homophobic slurs, according to a recent Instagram post from the establishment.
“Last night, our bar — the only QTBIPOC bar in DC — was broken into and hate-crimed during DC Black Pride, a time meant for celebration, resilience, and joy — and on the eve of WorldPride 2025. We are heartbroken, but we are not broken,” the post read.
The statement was accompanied by a slideshow showing the damage: the front iron gate door and its glass counterpart shattered, glass strewn across the floor, and the word “FAGGOT” scrawled in black ink on the wall.
“This space exists to protect and celebrate queer and trans BIPOC communities, and this attack only strengthens our resolve,” the post continued. “We will NOT be silenced. We will NOT be intimidated. We will NOT back down.”
“To those who tried to harm us: hate fuels our defiance. To our community: we see you, we love you, and we will continue fighting for you. Sinners and Saints is resistance. We will rebuild. We will STAY OPEN. And we will keep our doors — and hearts — wide open for all who need refuge.”
They ended the message with a call to action: “Stand with us. Share this. Show up. We keep us safe.”
“What happened was truly disheartening, but we won’t be silenced,” co-owner Fazeel Ashraf told the Washington Blade. “QTBIPOC spaces are so important in this current political climate. I’d love to do a phone interview with one of my fellow partners.”
Despite the heartbreak surrounding the break-in and what Ashraf described as “a hate crime,” the LGBTQ community quickly rallied in the comments, offering support and assistance.
“Please let us know how we can help!” wrote Nik Battaglia. “I’m a handy queer with handy queer friends — I can fix shit, paint shit, and am happy to stand guard outside.”
Even national figures chimed in.
“RuPaul’s Drag Race” star Laganja Estranja commented, “Incredible response! I believe in you. Sending so much love and strength.”
The Blade reached out to the Metropolitan Police Department regarding the break-in but has not received a response.
To view the damage, and some of the LGBTQ community’s supportive statements, visit the Sinners and Saints’s Instagram page.
The Comings & Goings column is about sharing the professional successes of our community. We want to recognize those landing new jobs, new clients for their business, joining boards of organizations and other achievements. Please share your successes with us at [email protected].
The Comings & Goings column also invites LGBTQ college students to share their successes with us. If you have been elected to a student government position, gotten an exciting internship, or are graduating and beginning your career with a great job, let us know so we can share your success.
Congratulations to Raffi Freedman-Gurspan on being appointed Associate Director, Federal Funding & Infrastructure Office, at the Massachusetts Executive Office for Administration & Finance. Freedman-Gurspan will be returning to her hometown of Boston and joining Gov. Maura Healey’s Administration. Freedman-Gurspan served in both the Obama and Biden administrations as well as worked in LGBTQ and redistricting advocacy during her 11 years in D.C.
Freedman-Gurspan was the first openly transgender person on the White House staff when she worked for President Obama. She most recently served at the U.S. Department of Transportation in former Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s office, as Deputy Director of Public Engagement. Previously she worked with the National Redistricting Action Fund/The All On The Line Campaign, as Deputy States Director. She worked for the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) as Director of External Relations. In the Obama White House, she worked in the Office of Public Engagement, as Senior Associate Director. She was the White House Liaison to the LGBTQ community responsible for management of all public inquiries on matters regarding LGBTQ people, including recommending public responses to senior leadership, assisting in drafting administration talking points, and coordinating stakeholder engagement with the White House offices. She worked with the White House, Presidential Personnel Office (PPO), as Outreach and Recruitment Director.
Prior to that she was on the staff of Commonwealth of Massachusetts, House of Representatives Office of State Rep. Carl Sciortino, as legislative director, and worked for the City of Somerville, Health Department, Office of Commissions, Somerville, Mass., as LGBTQ Liaison.
Freedman-Gurspan served on the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, the Presidentially Appointed Council; and as a member, and Board Member, Boston University, College of Arts and Sciences, Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies Program.
She earned her bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Norwegian, concentration in Nordic Studies, from St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minn.
District of Columbia
Murdered Israeli embassy officials were supporters of D.C.’s LGBTQ synagogue
Bet Mishpachah calls fatal shooting outside Capital Jewish Museum ‘devastating’
The two Israeli embassy officials who were shot to death outside D.C.’s Capital Jewish Museum Wednesday evening, May 21, were strong supporters of Bet Mishpachah, D.C.’s LGBTQ supportive synagogue, according to a statement it released.
“We are especially devastated by the loss of our dear colleague and friend of Bet Mishpachah, Sarah Milgram, and her soon to be fiancé, Yaron Lischinsky,” the LGBTQ synagogue said in a May 22 statement.
“Sarah was the liaison between Bet Mishpachah and the Israeli Embassy, working closely with our staff and clergy,” the statement says. “Her warmth, professionalism, and deep commitment to building bridges within the Jewish community made her not only a trusted partner but a beloved part of our extended congregational family,” according to the statement.
A statement also released on May 22 by the office of the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia says Chicago resident Elias Rodriguez, 30, has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder along with other weapons related charges in connection with the shooting deaths of Milgram and Lischinsky.
Officials with the D.C. police and the FBI, which has joined D.C. police in continuing to investigate the case, have said Rodriquez arrived in D.C. from Chicago one day prior to the shooting and appears to have targeted an event taking place at the Capital Jewish Museum for violence at the time it was hosting an event called “Young Diplomats Reception,” in which Israeli Embassy officials were in attendance.
Police and FBI officials have said Rodriguez allegedly shot Milgrim and Lischinsky after they left the Capital Jewish Museum at the conclusion of the event. The museum is located at 575 3rd Street, N.W.
“Surveillance footage reportedly shows Rodriquez walking past the victims before turning and firing multiple rounds,” the U.S. Attorney’s statement says. “After the victims fell, he allegedly continued firing at close range, including as one attempted to crawl away,” it says, adding, “Investigators recovered a 9 mm handgun and 21 spent shell casings at the scene.”
Police have said Rodriguez walked into the Capital Jewish Museum after the shooting and was detained by security guards until D.C. police arrived. Witnesses said he began to shout, “free, free Palestine” before police took him into custody.
“Make no mistake, this attack was targeted, antisemitic violence,” said Steven Jenson, an FBI assistant director working on the investigation. “The FBI will continue to pursue all leads and use all available resources to investigate this heinous murder,” he said in the statement.
The fatal shooting took place five days after the Capital Jewish Museum opened a special exhibition called “LGBT Jews in the Federal City” on May 16. “This landmark exhibition explores a turbulent century of celebrations, activism, and change in the nation’s capital by D.C.’s LGBTQ+ Jewish community,” the museum said in a statement announcing the exhibition.
Photos and documents related to Bet Mishpachah make up a prominent part of the exhibition.
During a May 22 press conference organized by the U.S. Attorney for D.C., Jeanine Pirro, to provide an update on the investigation into the two murders, Pirro and FBI official Jensen referred to the two murders as a hate crime and terrorist act.
In response to a question from the Washington Blade asking if investigators were looking into whether the LGBTQ exhibition at the Capital Jewish Museum might have played some role in Gonzales’s motive for targeting the museum, Pirro responded to the question.
“So, we are looking into absolutely everything,” she said. “There is so much information we’re looking at. And I must tell you, coming from New York, I’ve never seen the cooperation and coordination that I’m seeing here. It was immediate. It was instant. It was coordinated. And my hat’s off to this area. We’re going to clean it up, thank you,” she said in ending the press conference.
Josh Maxey, Bet Mishpachah’s executive director, said he and Israeli Embassy official Milgram became friends during their two-and-a-half-year interaction working on joint events between the embassy and Bet Mishpachah.
“This became a wonderful two and a half years journey of putting events together, of hosting events together, doing different programs for the community,” Maxey told the Blade. Among the activities the two worked on, he said, was the embassy’s annual LGBTQ Pride event.
Maxie said his own grieving over the death of Milgram and her boyfriend Lischinsky was heightened by the fact that he spoke with her by phone on the day of the shooting shortly before she arrived at the Jewish Museum over plans about this year’s LGBTQ Pride events.
“Sarah really championed us to be included in Israeli events,” Maxey said. “And so, I am just devastated that this true embodiment of an ally was so viciously and violently taken away from us.”
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