National
National news in brief
Palin Tweets, New Mexico considers marriage recognition and more
Palin’s re-Tweet sparks speculation about LGBT views
WASHINGTON — Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has inspired speculation about her stand on gay issues and “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” since she re-Tweeted a post from a gay talk radio host criticizing opponents of the repeal of the anti-gay policy, several media outlets reported this week.
At issue is a Tweet posted early Tuesday by Tammy Bruce, a conservative talk radio host that said, “But this hypocrisy is just truly too much. Enuf already — the more someone complains about the homos the more we should look under their bed.” Palin, who uses Twitter often to send out announcements and commentary to her 350,000 followers, posted Bruce’s comment on her own account but didn’t elaborate. She hadn’t commented on it publicly as of Blade press time Wednesday.
Bruce’s comment referred to a Navy captain who was relieved of his command for making a series of lewd videos that were shown to those serving under him on the USS Enterprise.
Palin’s opinions of gay issues have been unclear at times. She told Fox News last year that “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” wasn’t a pressing issue and that the military had more pressing matters to deal with. But she didn’t say she disapproved of repeal either.
In other gay matters, Palin opted not to veto partner benefits legislation when she was governor of Alaska, but has repeatedly said that marriage should be reserved for opposite-sex couples.
N.C. commissioner calls gays ‘sexual predators’
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A North Carolina county commissioner last week said that gays are “sexual predators,” according to reports from NPR, MSNBC and other media outlets.
The comment came from an e-mail Mecklenburg County Commissioner Bill James sent to board chair Jennifer Roberts. She wanted to send a letter on board stationary congratulating Sen. Richard Burr on his vote to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” James replied saying that not every homosexual is a predator but as a group, they are.
His comments, which received national attention, inspired a resolution from the commission that calls for tolerance, inclusion and civility. James voted for it but did not apologize for his earlier e-mail. He said he didn’t think the resolution would have much impact but said it was a nice gesture he could support because he believes in kindness.
Some of his fellow board members said his remarks are “beyond reproach” and “out of line.”
Minnesota town passes pro-gay ordinance
ST. LOUIS PARK, Minn. — The St. Louis Park City Council unanimously passed an ordinance Monday that will allow domestic partners — opposite- and same-sex — to register their partnerships with the city.
The ordinance won’t supersede any state or federal laws nor will it grant couples any new legal rights. The state of Minnesota doesn’t recognize gay marriage, but proponents tout it as a step in the right direction.
The ordinance will go in effect in February if it passes a formal second reading in two weeks, which is expected to easily pass.
Registration will ensure domestic partners the same family rates and benefits at city events and at area businesses. Another Minnesota town, Rochester, passed a similar ordinance.
N.M. official says gay marriages should be recognized
ALBUQUERQUE — New Mexico’s attorney general this week issued an opinion stating that same-sex marriages from other states would be legal in his state. He came to that conclusion after an in-depth legal analysis, the New Mexico Independent reported.
“While we cannot predict how a New Mexico court would rule on this issue, after review of the law in this area, it is our opinion that a same-sex marriage that is valid under the laws of the country or state where it was consummated would likewise be found valid in New Mexico,” Attorney General Gary King wrote.
While 40 states explicitly bar same-sex marriage, King says that New Mexico’s law does “not explicitly address the recognition of same-sex marriages from other jurisdictions,” according to the release announcing the opinion.
Senate confirms lesbian for Employment Commission
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate has confirmed a lesbian for a full term as a Commissioner of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
Chai Feldblum had been blocked previously by Republican senators but President Obama used a recess appointment to make her temporarily a commissioner last March. That temporary appointment would have expired at the end of 2011 but Feldblum will now serve through July 2013.
Prior to her recess appointment, Feldblum served as a professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center. Throughout her career, she has worked to enact protections for some of the most stigmatized populations in America. As legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union in the 1980s, she worked to secure legal protections for people with AIDS at a time when the disease was vilified and poorly understood. Feldblum also played a leading role in the drafting and negotiation of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.
The Commission was established as part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Its mission is to promote equality of opportunity in the workplace and enforce federal laws prohibiting employment discrimination.
Anti-gay group may end CPAC sponsorship
COLORADO SPRINGS — Colorado-based Focus on the Family is considering ending its sponsorship of a national conservative political action rally because of the involvement of a gay conservative group, the Associated Press and several media outlets reported.
The lobbying arm of Focus on Family, CitizenLink, is a co-sponsor of the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington next month.
CitizenLink senior vice president Tom Minnery told the Gazette that the group is participating partly to help offset the influence of the gay group, GOProud. But he says this may be the last year it’s a sponsor, the AP reported.
Sarah Palin and Mike Hucakbee are among those scheduled to speak at the conference.
Report focuses on suicide, risk among LGBT people
MIAMI — An expert panel of 26 leading researchers, clinicians, educators and policy experts have released a comprehensive report on the prevalence and underlying causes of suicidal behavior in LGBT adolescents and adults. The report was published online this week.
Titled “Suicide and Suicide Risk in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Populations: Review and Recommendations,” the report makes sweeping recommendations for closing knowledge gaps in what is known and not known about LGBT suicide behaviors and calls for making LGBT suicide prevention a national priority. This is especially timely in light of multiple suicide deaths among LGBT youth in recent months.
Despite four decades of research pointing to elevated rates of suicide attempts among LGBT people, national suicide prevention initiatives, including the 2001 U.S. National Strategy for Suicide Prevention, have given scant attention to suicide risk in sexual minority persons.
“With this report and recommendations, we hope to move LGBT suicide prevention squarely onto the national agenda and provide a framework for actions aimed at reducing suicidal behavior in these populations,” said Ann Haas, lead author and director of prevention projects for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.
The report found strong evidence of significantly higher suicide rates for gays of all ages compared to their straight counterparts and that increased depression and substance abuse problems among sexual minorities do not account for the higher rates but stigma and discrimination play “key roles.”
Most NOM money came from a few donors
WASHINGTON — The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) has released a partial version of its 2009 tax return, which shows that most of the more than $7 million it received that year came from a small number of large donors, NOM Exposed (which Human Rights Campaign sponsors) reported this week.
According to the report, three wealthy donors contributed 68 percent of the organization’s donations. The top five donors accounted for 75 percent of contributions. The donors were not identified and could be individuals or corporations.
The sites pointed out that NOM doesn’t represent a grassroots constituency but a small group of wealthy anti-gay supporters. NOM had kept its returns private until HRC reps visited their D.C. office twice in person.
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.
‘Things Like This’ embraces formula and plus-size visibility
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