National
After ‘Don’t Ask’ repeal, what’s next?
‘Our goals have been met’

Groups that worked to advance “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal last year aren’t resting on their laurels as they continue to see work ahead in ensuring that open service is implemented and gays in the military are treated fairly.
In the near term, the main priority for those organizations now that President Obama has signed legislation allowing for “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal is to ensure that certification of open service happens swiftly.
Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, said his organization will pursue open service as required by the law signed by the president.
“Dec. 22 was a great day, but the reality is, we don’t have repeal,” Sarvis said. “The reality is ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ is still the law. So, our first priority is the first 90, the first 180 days is to get certification.”
Aaron Belkin, director of the Palm Center, a think tank on gays in the military at the University of California, Santa Barbara, said his organization will be in “monitoring mode” for possibly the remainder of the year.
“The finishing line is here, but we haven’t crossed it yet, unless and until we get certification and good regulations,” Belkin said. “Our job at this point is to just make sure that the process continues and that if there’s any foot-dragging at the Pentagon, that we call attention to it.”
Belkin said he anticipates the Palm Center will produce another study about three or six months after certification is issued to determine if implementation was successful.
The measure Obama signed would only enact open service after the president, the defense secretary and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff certify that the U.S. military is ready for “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal.
Further, after certification takes place, a 60-day waiting period for congressional review must pass before gays can serve openly in the U.S. military without fear of discharge.
In the State of the Union address on Tuesday, Obama committed to certifying “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal before the year is out. The president said he expects certification to happen in a “matter of months” in an interview last month with The Advocate.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates has said he won’t issue certification for open service until new regulations are drafted and training has been instituted in the armed forces.
Beyond certification, groups working on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” foresee a number of outstanding tasks that will remain, including providing legal services and ensuring that benefits are offered to gay troops.
Sarvis said SLDN will continue to provide legal services to gay service members who are facing discharges or who have questions about coming out while in service.
“I think, as an organization, SLDN will still be here providing legal services, working with Congress on oversight and being a resource to the Pentagon to make open service a reality,” he said.
Sarvis said since the legislation was signed, SLDN has heard from more than 225 service members who’ve called with questions about continuing to serve safely or receiving benefits in the post-repeal military.
Further, Sarvis said ensuring gay service members receive the same benefits afforded to straight service members would be another aim for SLDN.
“The post-repeal focus, in large part, will be parity for LGBT service members — particularly parity with respect to benefits: health benefits, GI benefits across the board,” Sarvis said.
The Pentagon report on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” — published Nov. 30 — states that the Defense of Marriage Act prohibits the U.S. military from affording many benefits to same-sex partners of service members, but other benefits, such as death benefits and hospital visitation access, would still be available.
Sarvis said a combination of DOMA and other regulations prohibit gay service members from receiving the same benefits as their straight counterparts, but there is some leeway.
“There are some instances where the [defense] secretary has some authority with respect to definitional changes for dependents … but for most benefits, particularly involving spouses … DOMA is a big barrier,” Sarvis said.
Belkin also acknowledged that a number of tasks will remain even after certification takes place and open service is implemented — although he said he doesn’t know if the Palm Center would be the best organization to address them.
Among the outstanding jobs that Belkin cited are providing employee resources to liaison between gay troops and the Pentagon; promoting public education on transgender people in the U.S. military; and working with the Department of Veterans Affairs to create programming for gay service members.
Beyond the upcoming year, Belkin said he isn’t sure what tasks the Palm Center will pursue, but added he suspects consultation with other organizations could be on the agenda.
“We’ll be offering advice or pro-bono consulting to any organization that wants to learn some of the lessons that we learned along the way about public education and how to use social science to inform public policy conversations,” Belkin said.
Pro-LGBT groups that took on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” as part of a portfolio that included other issues plan to continue to use resources for other items on the agenda.
Fred Sainz, HRC’s vice president of communications, said his organization last year contributed about $3.5 million to the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal effort. But he cautioned against asking where that money would go this year.
“It’s not necessarily a fair posit to say, ‘You have these resources, which you dedicated to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” what are you going to do with that pot of money now?'” Sainz said. “Because as you know, the [‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’] issue changed considerably over the course of the year and we don’t yet know either the opportunities or the vulnerabilities that we have going into this coming year.”
One lingering question: What will anti-gay groups dedicated to keeping “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” on the books do now that legislative action on repealing the law is complete.
Elaine Donnelly, president of the Michigan-based Center for Military Readiness, was among the leading advocates attempting to stop gays from serving openly in the military. The “forced intimacy” of having gay troops serve with straight service members was among her favorite phrases.
The Center for Military Readiness didn’t respond to multiple requests on what the organization will pursue now that legislation has been passed to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
Belkin noted that Donnelly pursued keeping gays out of the military as part of a broader effort that includes preventing women from serving in combat.
“Her broad concern is the feminization of the military,” Belkin said. “So, there are a lot of ways in which she has tried to roll the country back to the 20th or the 19th century, so she has plenty of culture wars left to fight.”
Whether groups that have focused on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” will have reduced resources now that legislative action is complete also remains in question.
Sarvis said “time will tell” what kind of resources SLDN will have as he acknowledged the organization’s board approved in November — and reaffirmed in December — a slightly smaller budget from what it had last year.
According to Sarvis, SLDN’s board approved a budget for 2011 that was around 12.5 percent smaller than it was in 2010. He said it decreased from $2.4 million to $2.2 million.
Belkin said he doesn’t think the Palm Center will have same budget as it had in previous years and said the organization plans to stop fundraising.
“We have endowments that will keep sustaining us at a lower level capacity, but, I think, for the most part, once “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is gone, then the biggest part of our mission will be over, and we’ll be one of those organizations that’s fortunate enough to say, ‘Our goals have been met,'” Belkin said.
Servicemembers United couldn’t be reached for comment on what the organization intends to pursue now that legislative action on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal is complete.
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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