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
To school to homeschool to school again
‘Pandemic took more than 2 years of school. It took 2 years of my childhood’
It wasn’t until I no longer had those 30 minutes of lunch and recess, when all the boys and girls would come together to trade bracelets, make up games, gossip about who we liked, play tag and sports, that I realized how much of my childhood happened during the parts of school that had nothing to do with schoolwork.
I was in the third grade when the COVID-19 pandemic began. I remember my parents explaining that I couldn’t go back to school and wondering when I would see my friends again — or whether I wanted to go back at all. But after spending two years learning from home, cut off from the friends, teachers and routines I had known, I began to understand what I had lost.
For many of my friends and classmates, going to school changed from a bus ride every morning to clicking a link and seeing their teachers and classmates through a screen. My experience was a little different. Instead of going to virtual school, I was homeschooled. My new routine was sitting at my kitchen table, with my mom teaching me how to write a paragraph or solve a math problem, surrounded by the same walls I saw every day.
My family was not alone. Many families across the country turned to homeschooling after schools shut down. Homeschooling increased sharply during the pandemic, especially among Black families, rising from 3.3 percent in the spring of 2020 to 16.1 percent that fall, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey.
It would be two years before I entered a classroom again.
At first, I loved homeschooling.
I didn’t have to wake up early or put on a uniform. I liked the comfort of my own room, surrounded by my stuffed animals and toys. I didn’t have to push my way through that horrible lunch line because my food was now waiting for me at the kitchen table.
It felt like a fever dream where school was canceled and all day was fun. That was my view as a 9-year-old.
But as days turned into weeks and weeks into months, that initial excitement wore off.
Every day became the same routine. There was no recess when I could play princess with all the other girls. There were no conversations in the lunch line and none of the small things that had broken up the school day before. I didn’t realize how much those moments mattered until I could no longer experience them.
With less to look forward to, I started spending more time on the internet.
I turned to platforms such as YouTube and TikTok to distract myself. Instead of seeing what the kids around me were doing every day, I could watch people online show off their clothes, makeup, dances, art and lives.
Over time, I started comparing myself with what I saw. I thought the way I dressed was childish and wanted to be like the superstars I saw online. I followed what was trendy and admired the girls and boys who looked so confident on screen.
Before the pandemic, my friends and I didn’t need the internet to tell us what was popular. But during those years at home, I became much more aware of what other people thought was cool and what someone my age was supposedly supposed to like. I felt as though I was growing up without getting to experience all the steps in between.
When I finally returned to school, I thought my classmates would be excited to see each other again after spending so much time apart.
Instead, I realized how much we all changed.
When I walked through those doors, I remembered vague memories of running down those halls and always seeing my peers with smiles on their faces. Now those same faces were tired, with eye bags. The lunchroom, which used to be full of life with happy kids eating to their hearts’ content, turned into a lunch where all the girls controlled what they ate and talked about the latest trend on TikTok.
Maybe some of that change would have happened anyway. Kids grow up. Interests change. Middle school has always been awkward.
But I didn’t get to watch my classmates gradually change or change alongside them. I left one social world and came back to another.
When I returned, I was expected to understand a social world that had changed while I was gone. I felt I missed so much that I would never get back, and without that day-to-day learning to help me adapt to these new norms, I struggled.
Those everyday interactions are an important part of how children learn to get along with others: A 2026 meta-analysis of 157 studies from 33 countries published in the academic journal Child Development found that children’s social and emotional skills declined during the pandemic, along with their overall well-being. The researchers noted that schools are not just places where children learn math and reading. They are also places where children learn how to make friends, work through disagreements, understand other people’s feelings and manage their own emotions.
Years later, many parents say some of those effects are still being felt. In a 2025 Gallup survey, 45 percent of parents with school-age children said the pandemic hurt their child’s social skills, and 22 percent said those problems were still ongoing. Forty-two percent said the pandemic negatively affected their child’s mental health. Parents were more likely to report problems with their children’s social skills and mental health than with their academics or physical health.
I saw some of those changes around me, too. Classmates who once seemed outgoing became quieter or more withdrawn. Starting conversations felt harder. Making new friends felt harder. Sometimes retreating into myself felt easier than trying to figure out where I belonged.
Now, the kids who were in elementary school when the pandemic began are moving through high school. We are older, but some of us are still figuring out what those missing years meant.
Before the pandemic, I thought lunch and recess were simply breaks from learning. Now I understand that we were learning during those 30 minutes, too. We were learning how to make friends, how to disagree and make up, how to be embarrassed and recover from it, what we liked and what we didn’t, and slowly who we wanted to become.
I can’t know exactly who I would be if I had spent those years inside a classroom instead of at home. Maybe middle school still would have been awkward. Maybe I still would have worried about fitting in.
But I know I missed something I didn’t understand was important until it was gone: the ordinary, sometimes boring, sometimes ridiculous parts of growing up alongside other kids.
You can make up schoolwork. You can return to the classroom. But there are some parts of childhood you don’t get to repeat.
Gloria Collazo Huamani is a sophomore at Benjamin Banneker Academic High School in D.C., one of Youthcast Media Group’s journalism class partners. Gloria worked with James Jarvis, a YMG mentor-editor and reporter for Inside Health Policy, on this story.
Virginia
Gay Va. couple hopeful voters will enshrine marriage equality in state constitution
Early voting has already begun in the state
A referendum on whether to enshrine marriage equality in Virginia’s constitutional amendment is on the ballot this year.
If voters approve Question 2, it will codify the U.S. Supreme Court’s Obergefell ruling in 2015 that extended marriage rights to same-sex couples across the country — gays and lesbians have been able to legally marry in Virginia since Oct. 6, 2014.
Ron Bookbinder and James Fisher are a married couple who live in Arlington.
They have been together for 38 years — Bookbinder and Fisher married in 2014.
“We think this is a critical vote to remove this discriminatory language from the constitution and to ensure that going forward, no matter what happens, the state of Virginia will ensure marriage equality,” Fisher told the Washington Blade. “It is it is really difficult and upsetting to think that our current state constitution would prohibit same-sex marriage, even though the federal government overrides that now. There’s no saying what may happen in the future.”
Bookbinder said it was important for him and Fisher to get married “to gain social equality.”
“I was surprised how good it felt, how important it was to begin to say, ‘my husband rather than my partner,'” Bookbinder said.
Bookbinder then explained why it feels good to be married.
“Is it a legal partner, a business partner, a tennis partner, you know, or a romantic partner? But when you say my husband James, everyone knows exactly what you mean and confers an equal status with everyone else who’s married, and we were both surprised at how good it felt and how equal it felt to suddenly be married and be able to state that you were married and discuss your husband rather than your partner, and I would hate to lose that,” he said.
Bookbinder and Fisher said they are hopeful that voters will approve the amendment, noting Virginia has become more progressive over the years.
“I think people have, with the Supreme Court decision, people have seen that a same-sex marriage is just a marriage,” stated Fisher. “It’s just two people who love each other, and I think more and more people have attended a same-sex marriage, someone in their family or a friend, and the experience of what this is, firsthand experience, is so important in shaping people’s opinions, and I think the period of time that we’ve had since the Obergefell decision has given a lot of voters that experience, which I think is really important and powerful.”
The couple also said the push to enshrine marriage equality in Virginia’s constitution is in response to the Trump-Vance administration.
“And I think due to President Trump doing all the horrible things he’s done to so many groups, including LGBTQ, especially trans people, that Virginians are kind of pushed to be even more progressive to protect those who need protection, which would include the LGBTQ community in terms of marriage equality, so I’m confident it will pass,” said Bookbinder.
Narissa Rahaman, executive director of Equality Virginia, sent the Blade a statement about early voting on Question 2 that has already begun.
“With early voting now underway, our focus is making sure every Virginian knows Question 2 is on their ballot,” said Rahaman. “The outdated ban on same-sex marriage still in Virginia’s state constitution leaves a gap in protections for the thousands of same-sex couples that call this state home, but after 20 years we have the chance to fix it.”
Log onto www.mobilize.us/vaformarriage to find out more about the campaign in support of Question 2.
By JOHN-JOHN WILLIAMS IV | Those legendary heavy-handed pours, spirited karaoke and trivia nights, and groan-worthy wall-to-wall patrons on packed nights are back!
Leon’s will live to see another day.
Baltimore’s oldest gay bar, which opened in the 1950s, closed in July following the death of its owner, Ron Singer.
The rest of this article can be read on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
Lula, Flávio Bolsonaro to face off in second round of Brazilian presidential election
The financial realities facing LGBTQ+ first-time buyers
‘Merrily’ is for Sondheim super fans, the uninitiated, and anyone in between
Engrossing ‘Tip Toe’ delivers tension and an ominous warning
Eliot Glazer’s new book an engaging collection of essays
Meet the LGBTQ candidates running for U.S. House, Senate
Ana Brnabić becomes world’s first openly lesbian head of state
Vote now! Best Of LGBTQ DC readers’ choice awards
Gay Va. couple hopeful voters will enshrine marriage equality in state constitution
Victory Fund board investigates former staffers’ allegations against CEO Evan Low
-
2026 Midterm Elections5 days agoMeet the LGBTQ candidates running for U.S. House, Senate
-
Serbia5 days ago
Ana Brnabić becomes world’s first openly lesbian head of state
-
Arts & Entertainment5 days ago
Vote now! Best Of LGBTQ DC readers’ choice awards
-
Virginia4 days ago
Gay Va. couple hopeful voters will enshrine marriage equality in state constitution
