Bet Mishpachah Executive Director Joshua Maxey on Wednesday was among those who spoke at a ceremony in D.C. that marked the third anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack in Israel.

The Jewish Federation of Greater Washington hosted the ceremony that took place at the Washington Hebrew Congregation in Northwest D.C. Bet Mishpachah is the city’s LGBTQ synagogue.

“It was a deeply moving evening, especially hearing the stories of people who knew those who were murdered and those who survived and experiencing music that gave a voice to grief and hope,” Maxey told the Washington Blade.

Hamas militants on Oct. 7, 2023, killed roughly 1,200 people, including upwards of 360 partygoers at the Nova Music Festival near Re’im, a kibbutz that is a couple miles from the Gaza Strip, when it launched its surprise attack on Israel. The militants also kidnapped more than 200 people.

The Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry says Israeli forces have killed more than 74,000 people in the enclave since Oct. 7.

The International Criminal Court in 2024 issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant; former Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar; Mohamed Diab Ibrahim al-Masri, the head of Hamas’s military wing known as the Qassam Brigades; and Ismail Haniyeh, chair of the Hamas Political Bureau, after it accused them of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza and Israel.

The Israeli government has strongly denied it has committed genocide in Gaza.

An Israeli airstrike on a compound in Khan Younis, a city in southern Gaza, on July 13, 2024, killed killed Deif, one of the alleged Oct. 7 masterminds. Israel less than three weeks later assassinated Haniyah in Tehran, the Iranian capital. Israel Defense Forces soldiers on Oct. 16, 2024, killed Sinwar in Rafah, a city in southern Gaza.

Hamas last October released the remaining hostages in Gaza as part of a ceasefire agreement that President Donald Trump helped broker. Israel has continued to conduct airstrikes and other military operations in Gaza since the official suspension of hostilities took effect.

“For Bet Mishpachah, it was especially meaningful to lift up the names of LGBTQ+ people, those whose identities we know and those whose stories may never be fully known, who were murdered, and to honor the LGBTQ+ survivors whose resilience continues to inspire us,” said Maxey, referring to his participation in Wednesday’s ceremony. “Emily Damari’s story is particularly poignant: while held hostage, she had to hide the fact that she was gay because she feared that revealing her identity to her captors could put her life at even more risk. Yet, she survived.”

“Her story, like so many others, reminds us of the extraordinary courage it takes simply to remain human in the face of hatred,” he added. “May we continue to remember and to mourn, to honor, and to work toward a future rooted in peace and hope.”

Virginia advocacy groups have launched a campaign that urges the Virginia High School League to once again allow student athletes to compete on sports teams that correspond with their gender identity.

Equality Arlington on Sept. 16 published an article about the “Right 2 Play VA” campaign. Amy, a group representative, spoke about the initiative with the Washington Blade.

“The primary goal is to reverse the Virginia High School League’s discriminatory ban on allowing transgender girls to play on girls’ sports and replace it with a policy that is fair for all students.” they said.

The Virginia High School League in 2025 announced the policy, which reversed a previous position in support of transgender and nonbinary athletes. The 2025 policy coincided with President Donald Trump’s executive order — “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” — that threatened to “rescind all funds from educational programs that deprive women and girls of fair athletic opportunities, which results in the endangerment, humiliation, and silencing of women and girls.”

The Arlington Gender Identity Alliance, Equality Virginia, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia have also joined the “Right 2 Play VA” campaign.

“We had a policy in Virginia for 12 years that allowed transgender girls to play on girls’ sports teams, and we had not one instance — not one instance — that was brought forward demonstrating an unfair advantage or any type of safety concern,” said Amy. 

Amy then discussed what they described are the benefits of trans youth playing sports.

“There are physical benefits. There are mental health benefits. There are community and social development benefits, and those are all well documented,” they said. “All kids should have the right to benefit from playing youth sports. We are talking about kids. We are talking about youth. We are not talking about Olympians. We are not talking about Division One college athletes. We are talking about kids in Virginia, and because the benefits of sports are so well documented, we think that every kid should have the ability to play sports.”

(Editor’s note: This article is part of our 2026 contribution to the D.C. Homeless Crisis Reporting Project in collaboration with other local newsrooms. The collective works will be published throughout the week at bit.ly/DCHCRP.)

A decision by President Trump’s administration to eliminate most federal funding for community-based programs to place homeless people in permanent subsidized housing could have a severe adverse impact on LGBTQ people facing homelessness in D.C., according to local advocates.

Officials with organizations that provide services for homeless people in the D.C. area and nationally have pointed to an executive order issued by Trump last year that calls for ending federal support for so-called “Housing First” programs that arrange for permanent subsidized housing for homeless people. The officials note that Trump’s proposed fiscal year 2027 budget calls for eliminating funding for the Housing First programs.

Advocates for programs providing support for homeless people note that ending federal funding for permanent housing for homeless people will — and in some cases already has — resulted in occupants of homeless shelters and short-term transitional housing facilities remaining in those facilities far longer than in the past, preventing openings for others who need housing.

A lawsuit filed by several states and homeless advocacy organizations, including the D.C.-based National Alliance To End Homelessness, to block the Trump efforts to cut off those funds has temporarily delayed some of the funding cuts. A decision in August by a federal judge in Rhode Island declared the Trump action a violation of a federal law for failing to open the proposal for the funding cuts to public comment before putting it in place.

Court records show the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which provides the federal funding for homeless related programs, appealed the lower court ruling and an appeals court reversed the ruling pending further appeal by the parties that filed the lawsuit.

At least two of the five D.C. organizations that provide housing for homeless LGBTQ youth have said their funding so far has not been cut due to the Trump actions.

Cesar Toledo, executive director of the Wanda Alston Foundation, which currently provides transitional housing for 20 LGBTQ homeless youth, said his organization receives local D.C. government funding but no federal funding so his group has so far not been impacted by the Trump action.

Debby Shore, executive director of the Sasha Bruce Youthwork organization that  provides housing for young people ages 18-24, including some LGBTQ youth, said her organization also had not yet been impacted but it could be impacted soon.

“We have not had that funding cut,” she told the Washington Blade. “What we understand is if HUD is allowed to go through with those changes, then we will,” she said. “Because we have one of our programs that’s funded directly by HUD,” which she said could be considered the type of “long term” housing that HUD wants to cut.

A spokesperson for the local LGBTQ youth advocacy organization SMYAL, which currently provides housing for 55 homeless LGBTQ youth according to its website, didn’t immediately respond to a Blade inquiry into whether they have been impacted by the Trump actions. Toledo of the Alston Foundation said he understood that SMYAL has received federal funding for its homeless program.

At least two other D.C. organizations that provide housing for homeless youth, including some LGBTQ youth – Covenant House and the Latin American Youth Center – also couldn’t immediately be reached for comment on whether they have been impacted by the Trump funding cuts.

The city’s only shelter for homeless LGBTQ adults, which is operated by the D.C. Department of Human Services and is D.C. funded, has not been immediately impacted by the Trump funding cuts, according to a DHS statement sent to the Washington Blade in response to a Blade inquiry.  Called Living Life Alternative, the low-barrier shelter accommodates 40 individuals, the statement says.

It says DHS receives federal funding for its homeless services programs, and it was awaiting HUD approval for its annual federal funding grant for the city’s Permanent Supportive Housing program for homeless residents. It says the current funding for that program expires Jan. 31, 2027.

According to the statement, a separate federal grant DHS receives from HUD for homeless assistance services was approved for next year but included “a slight reduction in funding of $22,808.”

The annual 2026 Point-In-Time (PIT) count of homeless people in D.C., conducted in January, recorded a total of 5,363 people who were homeless, a 4 percent increase over the previous year.

The PIT count report shows 424 adults, or 12 percent of the adults counted, identified as members of the LGBTQ community, a slight increase over the 11.7 percent of homeless LGBTQ people counted in 2025. It shows that 38 percent of “Transition Age Youth” ages 18-24 identified as LGBTQ, an increase of one percent over the 37 percent of LGBTQ youth counted in 2025.

The Trump administration through HUD has said it supports housing for homeless people that lasts no more than two years and participants should be required to get treatment for the mental illness and substance use disorders such as drug addiction and alcoholism that many homeless people suffer from.

The Washington Post has cited studies showing that up to two-thirds of homeless people have a mental illness and two in five have a substance use disorder.

“Housing First has failed our most vulnerable and enabled addiction,” the Post quoted HUD saying in an email message. “HUD’s proposed reforms seek to address the root cause of homelessness and advance recovery, self-sufficiency, and competition that drives accountability,” the Post quoted the HUD statement as saying. 

Shore, director of Sasha Bruce Youthwork, disputes that assessment, saying treatment for disorders should not be a replacement for longer term housing programs, which she said improves the outcome of treatments for disorders.

“I think the idea of putting more services in place – I don’t have any problem with that,” she said. “But suggesting that you do that in exchange for longer term supports for people does not seem to be the right way to go.”