National
Jackson wants GOP to focus on marriage
CPAC panel emphasizes opposition to same-sex nuptials
Bishop Harry Jackson (Blade photo by Michael Key)
Two black conservatives are urging the Republican Party to emphasize social issues — such as opposition to same-sex marriage — to build appeal for the GOP among racial minority groups.
Bishop Harry Jackson of the Hope Christian Church, known for leading efforts against legalizing same-sex marriage in D.C., and Rev. Michael Faulkner, author of “Restoring the American Dream,” called for greater attention to social issues at the 2011 Conservative Political Action Conference in D.C.
During a panel titled “Traditional Marriage and Society,” Jackson said the conservative movement has “an opportunity to engage a multi-racial, multi-cultural group of people,” but only if the Republican Party doesn’t throw social issues “under the bus.”
“Whether I like the GOP or not, whether I like Republicans or not, there is no other party now that really is advocating any of the social issues that are consistent with my faith,” Jackson said.
Faulkner, who campaigned against Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.), said conservatives need to develop their message to racial minorities because they are ready to support the conservative movement.
“As I campaigned, especially in Latino churches, I was required before the pastor would allow me to speak to give my position on same-sex marriage and on abortion,” Faulkner said. “So they are staunch conservatives, probably more conservative than we are.”
Jackson spoke out against the advancement of marriage rights for gay couples and said it would interfere with parents’ rights in children’s education.
“If you change marriage, you redefine the family; if you redefine the family, you redefine parenting; if you redefine parenting, you must of necessity, redefine education, and in that redefinition, that’s where we get ‘Heather Has Two Mommies’ and a generation of kids as young as five-years-old are told that they are to be gay allies in the State of California,” Jackson said.
Faulker also railed against the advancement of gay nuptials and said pressure to be politically correct can’t change marriage.
“We need to stand for traditional marriage,” Faulkner said. “Not just stand against anyone else, but to stand for our society, stand for our culture, stand for our nation, stand for the children and the families in our nation. If we do not, we will indeed destroy ourselves.”
One LGBT rights group, on the other hand, says that Republicans must continue emphasizing fiscal issues as opposed to social issues to win support among the American public.
R. Clarke Cooper, executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans, said the focus of most conservatives is the economy as some within the movement continue to rail against same-sex marriage.
“There are going to be members of the conservative movement who are still going to hold social issues as their No. 1 focus, but what we saw at CPAC this last year was that was not the primary focus,” Cooper said.
Cooper pointed to the results of CPAC straw poll, which showed that same-sex marriage wasn’t a major concern among attendees.
Support for “protecting tradional marriage” was a priority for 3 percent of straw poll responders. Meanwhile, 53 percent of attendees said reducing the size of the federal government was a priority and 38 percent said reducing government spending was a priority.
Also during the panel discussion, Tom Minnery, senior president of government and public policy for CitizenLink, offered statistics that he said demonstrate countries with same-sex marriage are worse off than places that deny marriage rights to gay couples. LGBT advocates have long disputed the statistical accuracy of Minnery’s work.
Minnery said responders to a survey were asked whether married people were happier in countries with varying levels of relationship recognition for same-sex couples.
According to Minnery, in countries with same-sex marriage, 21 percent of responders said married people were happier; in countries with civil unions; 36 percent say married people are happier; in countries with only regional recognition, 42 percent of people said married people were happier; and in countries with no same-sex marriage, the respect for marriage “goes high.”
For another question on whether children need both a mother and a father to be happy, Minnery said 76 percent of responders said “yes” in countries with same-sex marriage; 80 percent of responders said “yes” in nations with regional recognition; and 93.8 percent of responders said “yes” in countries with no same-sex marriage.
“As the marriage culture in a country declines, the respect for marriage and the belief in its power also declines,” Minnery said. “That’s why our organization continues to believe if this country loses our marriage culture, we’re headed for a lot of trouble.”
In response, Gary Gates, a scholar at the Williams Institute, a think tank on sexual orientation law at the University of California, Los Angeles, said that in the United States, divorce rates are lower in places where same-sex marriage is legal.
“That doesn’t directly say people are quote, happier, but heterosexual relationships are more stable in places where same-sex couples can get married,” Gates said.
According to data last year from U.S. Census Bureau, in Massachusetts, where same-sex marriage has been legal since 2003, the divorce rate is 1.8 percent — the lowest in the nation.
With regard to statistics on having a mother and father being important for children, Gates said just because people have that belief doesn’t make it true.
“I just saw a report today: 50 percent of Republicans believe that Obama isn’t a natural-born citizen,” Gates said. “Because people believe it, doesn’t make it true.”
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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