National
Gates working to implement ‘Don’t Ask’ repeal
No timeline, but ‘this is high on his agenda’
Senior Defense Department officials are already working toward implementing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal, according to the Pentagon.
“This is high on [Defense Secretary Robert Gates’] agenda, and his senior staff is focused on it this week,” said Eileen Lainez, a Pentagon spokesperson, via e-mail to the Blade.
On Dec. 22, President Obama signed legislation allowing for repeal of the 17-year-old law banning open gays from serving in the U.S. military.
But repeal won’t take effect until the president, the defense secretary and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff issue certification that the armed forces are ready for an end to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” There is no set time for when this certification would take place, and the Obama administration hasn’t issued a timetable for when it might happen.
Additionally, after certification is issued, a 60-day waiting period for congressional review must take place before gays can serve openly in the U.S. military without fear of discharge.
Lainez said Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Clifford Stanley is working with the military service branches, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the combatant commands throughout the process for repeal.
“Planning for successful repeal includes reviewing and revising policies and directives, establishing education and training materials, developing integrated communication plans and obtaining feedback throughout the process,” Lainez said.
Capt. John Kirby, spokesperson for Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen, said the Pentagon is working through issues of implementation and certification. He said no final decisions have been made and he couldn’t offer further comment about Mullen’s plan for issuing certification.
A White House spokesperson deferred comment to the Defense Department on questions for when the president would issue certification. In an interview last month with the Advocate, President Obama predicted that certification for repeal would happen in “a matter of months.”
Aaron Belkin, director of the Palm Center, said implementation of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal shouldn’t be a long process because the Pentagon already established a policy to allow gays to serve openly in the military when a California federal court in October issued an injunction that temporarily enjoined enforcement of the law.
“Although they haven’t acknowledged this in public, the replacement regulations have already been written, and so the Pentagon could easily repeal the ban today if there was the political will,” Belkin said.
Belkin said lessons learned from foreign countries that have lifted their bans on gays in the military show two things are necessary for repeal: strong leadership and a set of rules that apply to everyone without mentioning sexual orientation.
“The commander-in-chief has said the policy hurts the military and research has also shown that there’s no advantage to the policy and that it’s easy to change,” Belkin said.
Michael Cole-Schwartz, a Human Rights Campaign spokesperson, said his organization foresees a similarly expeditious path for implementing repeal.
“President Obama, in his public statement and in his commitments to us, has said that he does not want this to be a drawn out process,” Cole-Schwartz said. “Our advocacy for the Pentagon and the White House is going to be for them to keep that commitment.”
Belkin said he suspects opposition to repeal from some military service chiefs — Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey, Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos and Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz — could slow the process for certification. Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead has said he supports repeal.
“Casey in particular is leaving soon and doesn’t want to be known as the Army chief of staff who let gays in on his watch,” Belkin said. “The foot-dragging is not about some sincere or legitimate sense that the troops need to be trained on how to deal with gays; it’s because they don’t want to be around when the policy happens.”
One lingering question about certification is whether Gates would remain in his role as defense secretary when certification takes place. The defense secretary has said he intends to retire sometime this year, although the specific date hasn’t yet been announced.
Belkin said he doesn’t think Gates would retire as defense secretary before he certifies repeal as “a matter of personal, professional pride for him to get this done on his watch.”
“It’s hard for me to believe that he will walk away from the process without finishing it,” Belkin said. “That’s not because I know anything from the inside, but just kind of triangulating the little pieces of insight here and there.”
Gates has said he wouldn’t certify repeal until training for open service has been implemented and he feels the service chiefs are comfortable moving forward.
New York
Men convicted of murdering two men in NYC gay bar drugging scheme sentenced
One of the victims, John Umberger, was D.C. political consultant
A New York judge on Wednesday sentenced three men convicted of killing a D.C. political consultant and another man who they targeted at gay bars in Manhattan.
NBC New York notes a jury in February convicted Jayqwan Hamilton, Jacob Barroso, and Robert DeMaio of murder, robbery, and conspiracy in relation to druggings and robberies that targeted gay bars in Manhattan from March 2021 to June 2022.
John Umberger, a 33-year-old political consultant from D.C., and Julio Ramirez, a 25-year-old social worker, died. Prosecutors said Hamilton, Barroso, and DeMaio targeted three other men at gay bars.
The jury convicted Hamilton and DeMaio of murdering Umberger. State Supreme Court Judge Felicia Mennin sentenced Hamilton and DeMaio to 40 years to life in prison.
Barroso, who was convicted of killing Ramirez, received a 20 years to life sentence.
National
Medical groups file lawsuit over Trump deletion of health information
Crucial datasets included LGBTQ, HIV resources
Nine private medical and public health advocacy organizations, including two from D.C., filed a lawsuit on May 20 in federal court in Seattle challenging what it calls the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’s illegal deletion of dozens or more of its webpages containing health related information, including HIV information.
The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington, names as defendants Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and HHS itself, and several agencies operating under HHS and its directors, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, and the Food and Drug Administration.
“This action challenges the widespread deletion of public health resources from federal agencies,” the lawsuit states. “Dozens (if not more) of taxpayer-funded webpages, databases, and other crucial resources have vanished since January 20, 2025, leaving doctors, nurses, researchers, and the public scrambling for information,” it says.
“These actions have undermined the longstanding, congressionally mandated regime; irreparably harmed Plaintiffs and others who rely on these federal resources; and put the nation’s public health infrastructure in unnecessary jeopardy,” the lawsuit continues.
It adds, “The removal of public health resources was apparently prompted by two recent executive orders – one focused on ‘gender ideology’ and the other targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion (‘DEI’) programs. Defendants implemented these executive orders in a haphazard manner that resulted in the deletion (inadvertent or otherwise) of health-related websites and databases, including information related to pregnancy risks, public health datasets, information about opioid-use disorder, and many other valuable resources.”
The lawsuit does not mention that it was President Donald Trump who issued the two executive orders in question.
A White House spokesperson couldn’t immediately be reached for comment on the lawsuit.
While not mentioning Trump by name, the lawsuit names as defendants in addition to HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr., Matthew Buzzelli, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health; Martin Makary, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration; Thomas Engels, administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration; and Charles Ezell, acting director of the Office of Personnel Management.
The 44-page lawsuit complaint includes an addendum with a chart showing the titles or descriptions of 49 “affected resource” website pages that it says were deleted because of the executive orders. The chart shows that just four of the sites were restored after initially being deleted.
Of the 49 sites, 15 addressed LGBTQ-related health issues and six others addressed HIV issues, according to the chart.
“The unannounced and unprecedented deletion of these federal webpages and datasets came as a shock to the medical and scientific communities, which had come to rely on them to monitor and respond to disease outbreaks, assist physicians and other clinicians in daily care, and inform the public about a wide range of healthcare issues,” the lawsuit states.
“Health professionals, nonprofit organizations, and state and local authorities used the websites and datasets daily in care for their patients, to provide resources to their communities, and promote public health,” it says.
Jose Zuniga, president and CEO of the International Association of Providers of AIDS Care (IAPAC), one of the organizations that signed on as a plaintiff in the lawsuit, said in a statement that the deleted information from the HHS websites “includes essential information about LGBTQ+ health, gender and reproductive rights, clinical trial data, Mpox and other vaccine guidance and HIV prevention resources.”
Zuniga added, “IAPAC champions evidence-based, data-informed HIV responses and we reject ideologically driven efforts that undermine public health and erase marginalized communities.”
Lisa Amore, a spokesperson for Whitman-Walker Health, D.C.’s largest LGBTQ supportive health services provider, also expressed concern about the potential impact of the HHS website deletions.
“As the region’s leader in HIV care and prevention, Whitman-Walker Health relies on scientific data to help us drive our resources and measure our successes,” Amore said in response to a request for comment from the Washington Blade.
“The District of Columbia has made great strides in the fight against HIV,” Amore said. “But the removal of public facing information from the HHS website makes our collective work much harder and will set HIV care and prevention backward,” she said.
The lawsuit calls on the court to issue a declaratory judgement that the “deletion of public health webpages and resources is unlawful and invalid” and to issue a preliminary or permanent injunction ordering government officials named as defendants in the lawsuit “to restore the public health webpages and resources that have been deleted and to maintain their web domains in accordance with their statutory duties.”
It also calls on the court to require defendant government officials to “file a status report with the Court within twenty-four hours of entry of a preliminary injunction, and at regular intervals, thereafter, confirming compliance with these orders.”
The health organizations that joined the lawsuit as plaintiffs include the Washington State Medical Association, Washington State Nurses Association, Washington Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Academy Health, Association of Nurses in AIDS Care, Fast-Track Cities Institute, International Association of Providers of AIDS Care, National LGBT Cancer Network, and Vermont Medical Society.
The Fast-Track Cities Institute and International Association of Providers of AIDS Care are based in D.C.
U.S. Federal Courts
Federal judge scraps trans-inclusive workplace discrimination protections
Ruling appears to contradict US Supreme Court precedent
Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas has struck down guidelines by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission designed to protect against workplace harassment based on gender identity and sexual orientation.
The EEOC in April 2024 updated its guidelines to comply with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), which determined that discrimination against transgender people constituted sex-based discrimination as proscribed under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
To ensure compliance with the law, the agency recommended that employers honor their employees’ preferred pronouns while granting them access to bathrooms and allowing them to wear dress code-compliant clothing that aligns with their gender identities.
While the the guidelines are not legally binding, Kacsmaryk ruled that their issuance created “mandatory standards” exceeding the EEOC’s statutory authority that were “inconsistent with the text, history, and tradition of Title VII and recent Supreme Court precedent.”
“Title VII does not require employers or courts to blind themselves to the biological differences between men and women,” he wrote in the opinion.
The case, which was brought by the conservative think tank behind Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation, presents the greatest setback for LGBTQ inclusive workplace protections since President Donald Trump’s issuance of an executive order on the first day of his second term directing U.S. federal agencies to recognize only two genders as determined by birth sex.
Last month, top Democrats from both chambers of Congress reintroduced the Equality Act, which would codify LGBTQ-inclusive protections against discrimination into federal law, covering employment as well as areas like housing and jury service.
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