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Theater outing proves helpful for the Alston House; GLOV elects new leaders
Transgender Health Empowerment's Earline Budd at the Alston House benefit. THE runs the Alston House. (Blade photo by Michael Key)
Alston House benefit called a success
A Black History Month outing at D.C.’s Studio Theater and a post-theater reception at the nearby Playbill Café on Feb. 13 served as a “successful” benefit for the Wanda Alston House for LGBT homeless youth, according to Alston House official Brian Watson.
The Alston House, named after the late D.C. lesbian activist and city official Wanda Alston, provides housing and supportive services to homeless LGBT youth, “most of whom have been abandoned or kicked out of their homes because of their identity,” according to an announcement promoting the benefit.
The D.C. non-profit organization Transgender Health Empowerment created the Alston House and operates it through funding provided, in part, by the city and through private contributions.
Among those attending the benefit were D.C. Council member Sekou Biddle (D-At-Large), who is running to retain his seat in an upcoming special election; and three candidates competing against Biddle for the seat — former Ward 5 Council member Vincent Orange and candidates Jacque Patterson and Joshua Lopez.
Jeffrey Richardson, who was named earlier this month by Mayor Vincent Gray as director of the city’s Office of GLBT Affairs, also attended.
Others attending included gay activists Phil Pannell, Rick Rosendall, and Kurt Vorndran, who served as hosts of the event.
GLOV elects new leaders
Members of Gays and Lesbians Opposing Violence (GLOV), a D.C. group that monitors anti-LGBT hate crimes, elected A.J. Singletary as the group’s chair and Hassan Naveed as vice chair during GLOV’s annual meeting on Feb. 10.
Singletary and Naveed, who ran unopposed and were elected by acclamation, succeed Kelly Pickard and Joe Montoni, who served as the organization’s co-chairs during the past year.
At Singletary’s recommendation and with Naveed in agreement, members voted earlier in the meeting to change the leadership structure from two co-chairs with equal responsibilities to a chair and vice chair system.
Singletary, an Arkansas native, says he’s been a D.C. resident since 2008 and has been active with GLOV for the past three years. Naveed said he moved to D.C. last year from Santa Barbara, Calif., where he worked with an anti-LGBT violence group at the University of California at Santa Barbara.
GLOV is a project of the D.C. Center for the LGBT Community, which has offices and meeting space at 1318 U St., N.W. GLOV’s mission, according to a statement on its website, is to work to reduce violence against LGBT people through community outreach, education and monitoring of incidents of anti-LGBT hate crimes. The group also assists victims of anti-LGBT violence and participates in the training of D.C. police officers on LGBT-related issues.
Singletary said his objectives for GLOV in 2011 include expanding its outreach to lesbians and minorities within the LGBT community and continuing to work with the police department, the mayor’s office and the City Council to improve reporting of anti-LGBT violence and developing strategies to reduce hate violence against LGBT people. He said GLOV would continue to participate in police training on anti-LGBT violence.
He also called for GLOV to develop its own report on hate crimes targeting LGBT people in the District. The police department’s annual report on hate crimes has shown that the highest number of such crimes target LGBT people. But activists have long complained that the police report does not reflect the true number of anti-LGBT hate crimes, which they believe is far higher than the officially reported figure.
District of Columbia
Mayor Bowser signs bill requiring insurers to cover PrEP
‘This is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS’
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser on March 20 signed a bill approved by the D.C. Council that requires health insurance companies to cover the costs of HIV prevention or PrEP drugs for D.C. residents at risk for HIV infection.
Like all legislation approved by the Council and signed by the mayor, the bill, called the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act, was sent to Capitol Hill for a required 30-day congressional review period before it takes effect as D.C. law.
Gay D.C. Council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5) last year introduced the bill.
Insurance coverage for PrEP drugs has been provided through coverage standards included in the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. But AIDS advocacy organizations have called on states and D.C. to pass their own legislation requiring insurance coverage of PrEP as a safeguard in case federal policies are weakened or removed by the Trump administration, which has already reduced federal funding for HIV/AIDS-related programs.
Like legislation passed by other states, the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act requires insurers to cover all PrEP drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Studies have shown that PrEP drugs, which can be taken as pills or by injection just twice a year, are highly effective in preventing HIV infection.
“I think this is a win for our community,” Parker said after the D.C. Council voted unanimously to approve the bill on its first vote on the measure in February. “And this is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS.”
District of Columbia
Blade editor to be inducted into D.C. Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame
Kevin Naff marks 24 years with publication this year
Longtime Washington Blade Editor Kevin Naff will be inducted into D.C.’s Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame in June, the group announced this week.
Hall of Fame honorees are chosen by the Society of Professional Journalists’ Washington, D.C., Pro Chapter. Naff and two other inductees — Seth Borenstein, a Washington-based national science writer for the AP and Cheryl W. Thompson, an award-winning correspondent for National Public Radio — will be celebrated at the chapter’s Dateline Awards dinner on Tuesday, June 9, at the National Press Club. The dinner’s emcee will be Kojo Nnamdi, host of WAMU radio’s weekly “Politics Hour.”
“I am tremendously honored by this recognition,” Naff said. “I have spent a lifetime in the D.C. area learning from so many talented journalists and am humbled to be considered in their company. Thank you to SPJ and to all the LGBTQ pioneers who came before me who made this possible.”
Naff joined the Blade in 2002 after years in print and digital journalism. He worked as a financial reporter for Reuters in New York before moving to Baltimore in 1996 to launch the Baltimore Sun’s website. He spent four years at the Sun before leaving for an internet startup and later joining the mobile data group at Verizon Wireless working on the first generation of mobile apps.
He then moved to the Blade and has served as the publication’s longest-tenured editor. In 2023, Naff published his first book, “How We Won the War for LGBTQ Equality — And How Our Enemies Could Take It All Away.”
Previous Hall of Fame inductees include luminaries in journalism like Wolf Blitzer, Benjamin Bradlee, Bob Woodward, Andrea Mitchell, and Edgar Allen Poe. The Blade’s senior news reporter Lou Chibbaro Jr. was inducted in 2015.
Maryland
Supreme Court ruling against conversion therapy bans could affect Md. law
Then-Gov. Larry Hogan signed statute in 2018
By PAMELA WOOD, JOHN-JOHN WILLIAMS IV, and MADELEINE O’NEILL | The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled against a law banning “conversion therapy” for LGBTQ kids in Colorado, a ruling that also could apply to Maryland’s ban on the discredited practice.
An 8-1 high court majority sided with a Christian counselor who argues the law banning talk therapy violates the First Amendment. The justices agreed that the law raises free speech concerns and sent it back to a lower court to decide whether it meets a legal standard that few laws pass.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the court’s majority, said the law “censors speech based on viewpoint.” The First Amendment, he wrote, “stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country.”
The rest of this article can be read on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
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