Local

‘Strategic blunder of monstrous proportions’

Insiders rip HRC, Gill decision to cancel Maryland vote on marriage

Published

14 years ago

March 16, 2011

Lou Chibbaro Jr.

(Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

The decision to cancel a March 11 vote on a same-sex marriage bill in the Maryland House of Delegates was a mistake that could hurt rather than help the chances for passing the bill within the next several years, according to Maryland-based advocates who lobbied for the bill.

The advocates who expressed this view, some of whom spoke on condition that they not be identified, said at least four national LGBT groups put pressure on lawmakers through Equality Maryland, the statewide LGBT group, to withdraw the bill rather than risk a losing vote.

One of the advocates called the national groups and their political operatives who came to Maryland to lobby for the bill well intentioned but unfamiliar with the nuances and “rhythms” of the Maryland Legislature.

“I think this was a strategic blunder of monstrous proportions,” said Mark McLaurin, political director of Maryland’s Local 500 of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which lobbied for the bill.

McLaurin, a gay man who has lobbied the Maryland Legislature for progressive causes for more than 15 years, said many insiders familiar with the legislature don’t think a losing vote by a close margin would hurt the bill’s chances in the future.

On the other hand, McLaurin and others who favored taking a vote on the marriage bill said the legislature has a history of not taking up highly controversial bills two years in a row. McLaurin said he fears that the bill won’t come back for a vote until 2015, even though Speaker of the House Michael Busch (D-Anne Arundel County) said he would try to bring the measure back in 2012.

Busch said supporters appeared to fall just a few votes shy of the 71 votes needed to pass the bill in the 141-member House. However, he said wavering delegates might have chosen to vote “yes,” raising the possibility that the bill could have passed.

Several knowledgeable sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, agreed with McLaurin’s assessment.

“Gill and HRC decided it was detrimental to the larger movement to have the vote go down,” one source said. “Gays and lesbians in Maryland deserved a debate and a vote on legislation that we waited years for.”

Another source criticized Busch’s handling of the bill.

Maryland House of Delegates Majority Leader Kumar Barve and Maryland House Speaker Michael Busch (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

“[Speaker Michael] Busch could have squeezed harder but didn’t. This is a new House of Delegates and this man didn’t bother to take the temperature of the new House of Delegates. I was shocked. I thought House leadership was more strategic, intelligent and powerful than this and it all evaporated.

“God forbid we put our swing vote Democrats on the line to take a vote for our families. Or maybe the Speaker has lost control of his chamber.”

There was also criticism of Gov. Martin O’Malley, who the sources faulted for not taking a more public stand in support of the bill.

“O’Malley stopped by Friday for a photo op with marriage supporters,” one source said. “What a vacant gesture at the 11th hour. You couldn’t write an op-ed the week before?”

The Civil Marriage Protection Act won approval in the Maryland Senate earlier this month. It died last Friday for at least this year when the House of Delegates approved by voice vote a motion to send it back to committee.

All of the bill’s sponsors, including seven openly gay members of the House of Delegates, appeared to support the motion, a development that stunned LGBT activists watching the proceedings from the visitors’ gallery.

The motion to recommit the bill to committee came after supporters and opponents engaged in an emotional, two-and-a-half hour debate over the bill. Most of the activists for and against the bill watching from the galleries didn’t know that the bill’s sponsors had decided beforehand to cancel the vote.

McLaurin said he learned from those attending strategy meetings that the eight-member LGBT Caucus of the legislature was divided over whether to postpone the House vote.

The caucus includes Sen. Richard Madaleno (D-Montgomery County), and House of Delegates members Maggie McIntosh, Mary Washington, and Luke Clippinger, each Democrats from Baltimore; Heather Mizeur, Bonnie Cullison, and Anne Kaiser, each Democrats from Montgomery County; and Peter Murphy, a Democrat from Charles County.

Spokespersons for Equality Maryland, the statewide LGBT group that led the lobbying effort for the bill, and officials with the national groups Freedom to Marry and Human Rights Campaign defended the decision to withdraw the bill.

They said the decision was made jointly by the bill’s lead sponsors, including the one gay male and six lesbian delegates, who determined it was better to postpone the vote than to risk a losing vote, which they said would be perceived as a defeat.

“This is a strategic effort to give ourselves more time to make the case and win,” said Evan Wolfson, executive director of Freedom to Marry. “And all of us believe we can win. It’s just a matter of nailing down the votes and getting there.”

HRC spokesperson Fred Sainz said the decision to cancel the vote came after it became clear that supporters didn’t have the votes to pass it.

“This was a shared decision by all the stakeholders – Equality Maryland, the state’s LGBT Caucus, Gill Action, Freedom to Marry, and HRC,” he said. “It was the consensus belief that the best way to win marriage in Maryland was by a delay and not by losing a vote.”

Officials with Gill Action, a philanthropic group founded by gay businessman Tim Gill in Colorado that funds LGBT rights causes, did not return a call seeking comment.

An official with the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, Robin Brand, also pushed for postponing the vote, activists familiar with the legislature said. Brand told the Blade she discussed the issue with the gay delegates in the Victory Fund’s role of working with openly gay elected officials. She said she left it up to them to decide on whether or not a vote should be taken.

McLaurin, a former member of the Equality Maryland board, said the advocates who wanted the vote to go forward believe it would have been worth “a roll of the dice” to determine if supporters had the 71 votes needed to pass the bill.

“In the worst case scenario we would have come up two or three votes short,” he said. “And I think that a loss by two or three votes would be much more galvanizing to the community of supporters that we’re going to need to rally and accomplish this goal.”

McLaurin added, “Either way it was going to get billed as a failure. I’d rather have on record who’s with us and who’s against us.”

Another former Equality Maryland board member, David Toth, wrote in a Facebook posting that the group was deleting messages left on its own Facebook page that were posted by a large number of supporters who expressed outrage over the decision not to have a vote on the bill.

“Anyone who is asking questions of EqMD or its staff is having their posts deleted like crazy,” he wrote. “After donating thousands of dollars and working on the board for over six years I simply find this appalling.”

Evan Wolfson of Freedom to Marry (Blade photo by Michael Key)

Wolfson of Freedom to Marry cautioned that a public fight over the decision not to have a vote could hurt efforts to bring the bill back next year.

“This is a temporary pause in the voting and it’s not a pause in the work,” he said. “So we don’t need finger pointing and recriminations, we need redoubling the effort to win.”

Although Equality Maryland, led by executive director, Morgan Meneses-Sheets, was billed as the lead organization calling the shots, insiders say field workers from the national groups like Freedom to Marry, HRC and Gill Action Fund far outnumbered Equality Maryland’s staffers working the halls of the legislature in Annapolis.

It was the national groups, rather than Equality Maryland, that had the ear of supportive lawmakers, including the LGBT Caucus members, during the days leading up to the scheduled vote on the bill in the House, McLaurin and other insiders said.

In a March 10 e-mail sent to LGBT Caucus members and other lawmakers supporting the bill, representatives of Freedom to Marry, Gill Action and HRC urged the lawmakers to postpone the vote.

“With the rights of so many Marylanders on the line, we wanted to flag our serious concern about going to a floor vote tomorrow when it’s not been confirmed we have 71 votes,” the e-mail says. “Various counts have us at 69 or 70 but not 71 or beyond.”

The e-mail adds, “The decision on whether to ask the leadership to move forward or postpone the vote rests with our openly LGBT legislators and other sponsors (in consultation with EQMD) who know their colleagues far better than we do, and who have so courageously led the way.”

The e-mail was signed by Bill Smith and Sarah Vaughn, national political director and deputy political director of Gill Action; Marty Rouse and Sultan Shakir, the lead officials at HRC’s field office; and Marc Solomon, national campaign director for Freedom to Marry.

In a separate e-mail sent the next day to most of the same people, HRC’s Rouse warned of serious political consequences if a vote on the marriage bill were to be taken.

“I plead with you to please delay this vote,” he said. “It would be devastating to suffer a huge loss. There will be vitriol and pain that may take years to soothe.”

Rouse said he also feared that a losing vote would damage relationships between the LGBT community and lawmakers who voted against the bill.

“I am sure that relationships are already frayed, but, if there are impassioned speeches on the floor, and tears shed, and we still lose, those relationships will be damaged even more. The air in the chamber will be toxic for months if not years,” he said.

McLaurin said at least some of the strained relations that Rouse mentioned have already come about, in part, because of the impassioned debate on the House floor that took place on March 11. He said he was puzzled over why those making the decision chose to have the debate and not go one step further to allow a vote to take place.

According to McLaurin, Speaker Busch left it up to the bill’s supporters and Equality Maryland to make the final call on whether to have a vote.

“From what I’ve been told by people in the know, he said, ‘What’s your pleasure? I’ll defer to you.’”

“And so from my understanding, there was a lot of pressure from the national organizations not to pull the trigger on a vote unless you are certain you had 71 votes because apparently it would demoralize our [same-sex marriage] efforts in Rhode Island and New York,” said McLaurin.

“I say poppycock. Pulling the bill from the floor is a defeat every bit as much as a losing vote is,” he said.

McLaurin said he thinks some of the national LGBT officials pushing for a delay in the Maryland vote had a fundamental misunderstanding that the Maryland House of Delegates would act like the New York State Senate acted in 2008, when it defeated a same-same marriage bill by a 38-24 vote.

Most supporters of the New York bill thought the vote would be much closer. Gay State Sen. Tom Duane (D-Manhattan) said he believed he had lined up enough votes to pass the measure. But when a roll-call vote started, a few wavering senators voted no, causing what observers called a cascading or “avalanche” effect, prompting others whose support was shaky to vote no.

McLaurin said such a development could not happen in the Maryland House of Delegates because all votes are cast electronically at the same time. No one knows who votes which way until the final tally is released seconds after the votes are cast. Pages on the floor then distribute a printout showing how the delegates voted.

“That’s why one of my underlying themes is you’ve got to know the Maryland Legislature,” he said. “We can’t have national groups fly in from L.A. and New York and train in from D.C. and conduct this campaign because we’re fundamentally different. We’re a different body.”

If some of the national group representatives had been in Annapolis at the time the legislature debated a highly contentious bill to repeal the state’s death penalty in 2007 or during several abortion related debates in the 1990s they would have seen a great reluctance to revisit these issues a second time, McLaurin said.

“What I fear is next year there’s just not going to be the stomach to do this again,” he said in discussing the marriage bill. “If you listened to the debate on the floor, everyone spoke of how deeply divided the House was, how deeply emotional this was, how it frayed relationships, how people weren’t speaking to each other.

“Do you think they will have the stomach to do that again next year without any reasonable expectation of a different outcome because they’re still pitching the same ideas to the same audience?”

“No one would be happier to be wrong about this than me,” he said. “But I just don’t think that I am. And I know I’m not alone. Some of the chief strategists behind this bill feel the same way I do.”

Wolfson of Freedom to Marry disputes that assessment.

“Anyone who is making comments to you or to anyone else suggesting that somehow this is over and it’s now a cause for finger pointing has failed to understand that it’s not over,” he said. “We’re in the midst of the work and we all should keep our eye on the prize of doing what we can to round up the last few votes and win.”

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District of Columbia

Many LGBTQ residents escaping D.C. for inauguration weekend

Some fear queer spaces could be targeted by MAGA crowd

Published

19 hours ago

January 15, 2025

Joe Reberkenny

Donald Trump at his first inauguration in 2017. (Blade file photo by Michael Key)

Donald Trump will be sworn in on the steps of the U.S. Capitol as the 47th president on Monday, becoming the second person in history to ever return to the Oval Office after losing an election. As fencing and roadblocks begin to pop up in preparation for a weekend of Trump supporters gallivanting on the National Mall and across the capital, many LGBTQ people in Washington have made plans to leave the District.

Nick Gomez, a 27-year-old music director for iHeartRadio and host of PRIDE Radio told the Washington Blade he will leave the city for northern Maryland with a group of kickball team members. Gomez explained that this weekend being both a federal holiday (Martin Luther King Jr. Day) and a weekend when he didn’t want to remain in Washington, it made sense to join some friends on a trip.

“I thought that it was a small group, but it’s actually a very large group of us looking at the group chat now,” Gomez said. “We’re getting a little cabin out in northern Maryland.” He said 27 members of his LGBTQ Stonewall Kickball team are planning to ride out the inauguration away from Trump supporters and MAGA hats.

“Normally a little kickball team cabin weekend happens every year, but we did coordinate it to happen on inauguration weekend this year — decidedly after Nov. 5 is when we booked the Airbnb,” he said.

Gomez’s choice to leave Washington was not a snap judgment though. For a while he contemplated what to do and if he should leave the city at all.

“I’ve thought about this a lot, actually,” he said. “I was thinking, ‘What is it going to be like to live in this city while the administration is active outside of just inauguration weekend?’ There was a part of me that’s like, ‘I don’t need to be caught up in all that. I know that that’s probably not going to be good for me. And it very well could turn into a fucking hellscape out here.’ But there was another part of me that’s like, ‘Well, why am I going to leave? Because this is my city. I’m the one who lives here!’ And that kind of went into thinking about the inauguration weekend.”

Gomez understood this would not be like any previous inauguration, given the inflammatory president-elect and his largely anti-LGBTQ followers.

“The difference about inauguration weekend is that this inauguration is happening on the 20th, but there’s also that rally happening on the 19th,” he said. “Anything that we can get caught up in on the 19th is just simply not going to be beneficial for queer people in the city, or the city itself.”

The twice-impeached president-elect is planning to hold a “victory rally” for 20,000 supporters the day before he is sworn in. This will mark the first time Trump will speak to a crowd in Washington since Jan. 6, 2021, when groups of his supporters stormed the Capitol in hopes of overturning the fair election of Joe Biden. Trump’s fans, and their inclination to venture toward violent behavior, Gomez explains, is a large reason for why he chose to leave Washington for the weekend.

“There are going to be so many people from out of town here, people from around the country here whose only objective is to support this man. We know what that looks like when people support this man in a physical sense. If they’re going to do that for two days, I don’t need to be here for that. I also don’t need to validate their presence by welcoming them to my city.”

He understands that some LGBTQ community members may feel that is the exact reason to stay in Washington.

“Maybe there are some differing opinions on that,” Gomez added. “Maybe people think, ‘You know what, I’m going to sit here and stand my ground’ and like, ‘This is my city no matter what.’ I just think that there is a smarter way to stand my ground in my city than subjecting myself to whatever chaos is going to be here on those two days.”

“It’s more of a refusal to leave on my part,” said Luke Stowell, 22, the queer assistant director of music at the Chevy Chase Presbyterian Church who is hunkering down in the District this weekend. “I live here. I pay rent here. I’m not going anywhere, just because 650,000 Republicans are coming. This is my home.”

Stowell explained that he is on the side of staying in Washington for the inauguration, if nothing else to be a voice of resistance against the Trump regime.

“I almost wish that there wasn’t such a desire for exodus,” they added. “I wish that there were a little bit more of a ‘Hey, like, No, we’re actually going to stand our ground.’ I appreciate the defiance, but I see it more as a defense of this territory. It’s obviously, as we know, a hugely liberal territory.”

Stowell has debated shifting his daily routine ahead of Sunday’s MAGA rally to avoid the Gallery-Place/Capital One Arena area.

“They’re saying that there’s a big rally before the inauguration down at Capital One Arena, and that’s actually where my Planet Fitness is,” they said. “I’m very interested to see if I try to go to the gym on Sunday, will it even be open? Will it be overrun with MAGgots? Otherwise on Monday, I have choir. I have things to do on Monday. My life doesn’t really stop just because the inauguration is happening. Some people don’t even have time off for the MLK Day holiday. It seems so crazy that those are on the same day, but yeah, I’ll be around.”

Sam Parker, a 30-year-old managing strategist at a political consulting firm, chose to use this weekend to escape from the city and to get closer to his partner after experiencing the first Trump inauguration from a very close distance.

“My boyfriend and I are going to Philly for the weekend, all the way until Tuesday to avoid the inauguration, and to get out for the three-day weekend,” Parker said. “It’s definitely largely predicated on the fact that I lived in Foggy Bottom the last time he was inaugurated.”

Parker has since moved away from any of the neighborhoods that will be fully locked down during the inauguration but would rather just avoid any repeated feeling of being locked down as he was eight years ago.

“It was entirely in the shutdown zone — there were armored cars on the street. It was inescapable. My current neighborhood is probably a little less… omnipresent. … But I’ve kind of gotten over the idea that there’s some kind of ‘noble aim’ being witness to all this stuff, and that it’s kind of better for my mental health to just get out of town. Also, politics aside, it feels like the town gets kind of locked down for an inauguration. It is kind of nice to use some Amtrak points and go somewhere else. Have a less stressful weekend.”

Justin Westley, a 28-year-old fundraising professional for an environmental NGO, is also using this weekend as an opportunity to grow closer to their boyfriend, Matt. Matt, who works for the federal government, requested anonymity due to concerns about potential repercussions for speaking out against the incoming administration, but wholeheartedly agreed about wanting to leave the city ahead of Trump’s arrival.

“We’re going to Boston this weekend,” Westley said. “We’re visiting Matt’s sister, who lives up there. We’re going to stay and visit for a while, and this just seemed like a good opportunity. It’s very practical, because we were wanting to see Matt’s sister anyway. … I know most of our friends are either doing cabin trips or small weekend getaways anyway. We probably would have left regardless. I do think going to Massachusetts, a very blue state, and Boston, a very blue city, will be nice to not have to worry at all about interacting with those people [Trump supporters] on the day-to-day.”

“Yeah,” Matt agreed. “Visiting a city that has voted primarily blue the past several elections offers a political comfort. But also, there’s a fun aspect of exploring a new city. Justin’s never been there. And then there’s comfort there — visiting a family member. That’s also just kind of like a safety net.”

Matt added that he has already seen law enforcement begin taking precautions in the District ahead of Monday’s events, solidifying the choice to leave ahead of whatever the weekend holds.

“I actually live pretty close to the White House, in the general Logan Circle area, and they’ve been testing drones,” Matt said. “I remember seeing the news articles that they’re going to be testing them throughout the week, leading up to the inauguration. I haven’t been down near the actual mall, but the traffic patterns have already changed, just walking around the neighborhood. And the transportation agency has released what streets are going to be closed and navigating the area around my apartment is just going to be a nightmare.”

This caused Westley to reflect on where he, and the city, was four years ago.

“I’ve just been thinking back to Jan. 6 — the disrespect, the terrorism, the white supremacy, but also just the disrespect toward the people who live here,” Westley said. “Four years later, after all of that, these people are going to be coming back under the presumption of ‘Welcome to the city!’ For the first Trump administration, I lived in Nashville and in Pittsburgh. Those are both red and like purple states, respectively. The cities themselves truly did feel like… not being in a bubble, but like, a true insulated community where I wasn’t on edge about seeing Trump supporters — like MAGAs in the streets necessarily…There is just going to be a lot more Trump supporters [in Washington], and that just makes me feel a lot less secure.”

Despite feeling less secure this time around, Westley echoed Parker’s earlier sentiment on the importance of prioritizing his mental health while navigating this weekend, and the next four years.

“While I can’t control being around staffers in the streets for the next four years, I can control when I’m around the sort of enthusiastic supporter that would be coming to the inauguration,” Westley said. “Removing myself from the situation felt like the healthiest thing for me, especially thinking about the next four years and for the energy that I’ll have to devote to protecting the people I love, the people close to me, as well as the community more broadly. I want to make sure that I’m starting that from a place of safety and resilience and not fear.”

Stephen Hayes, 37, a non-profit fundraising professional, will use the long holiday weekend to celebrate his wedding anniversary and avoid unnecessary political conflict with people who may not support him and his husband.

“I had already planned on going out of town this weekend,” Hayes told the Blade. “It’s my husband and my 11th wedding anniversary. We got married in New York and we return every year for our anniversary. Our anniversary happens to fall in the middle of the week, so we’re going the weekend prior.”

Hayes initially was more hopeful the country would go in a different direction than a second Trump presidency and kept that in mind when originally planning his anniversary weekend.

“I had originally planned to return in time for the inauguration, because I was hopefully optimistic that things would go the other way. But once we learned that they didn’t go the way that I’d like, I changed my plans to extend my stay in New York through the inauguration and return the following day, hopefully avoiding most of the people who will be here in town for the event.”

This trip, Hayes recalls, seems to be very similar to his holiday weekend during Trump’s first inauguration two terms ago.

“It’s kind of funny because eight years ago I was in New York during some of the first protests [against Trump] with the ‘pussy hat/pink hat’ protests that took place in New York,” he said. “I wasn’t planning to be there during the inauguration, and I wasn’t yet a D.C. resident, but now it will be interesting to be in New York City again for the inauguration.”

“It feels like there’s a lot of unknown right now,” Hayes added. “Personally, I kind of have my guard up. The people coming to town might not be as friendly as your average visitor so I would just be hyper vigilant. Be aware of what’s going on around you. I want to say that queer spaces are safe spaces, but they might be a targeted place. I don’t think that’s going to happen, but the pessimist in me says be prepared.”

“It is super easy to feel really helpless and we’re all allowed to feel helpless, but eventually something has to come of that helplessness,” Gomez added. “I have no doubt that the queer community in this city will do that, and something will come out of it. But I think if there’s anything that I would want to share just from my personal experience over the last however many weeks, it’s that helplessness is OK, and it will not last forever. There’s an entire city of people around you that are there to lean on.”

Trump’s inauguration happens Monday, Jan. 20 at noon on the Capitol steps. If you’re staying in town, Metro has released information regarding the change in transportation schedules ahead of the three-day weekend.

“Metro is prepared to move customers for Inauguration Day with additional train service and earlier hours,” WAMATA announced. “Per the request of the United States Secret Service and the United States Capitol Police, Metrorail will open at 4 a.m. on Monday, Jan. 20 to accommodate the crowds. Five stations will be closed, and trains will bypass these stations for security reasons from Sunday, Jan. 19 at 8 p.m. until 5 a.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 21: McPherson Square (Blue, Orange, Silver lines), Federal Triangle (Blue, Orange, Silver lines), Smithsonian (Blue, Orange, Silver lines), Mt. Vernon Sq.-Convention Center (Green, Yellow lines), Archives-Navy Memorial (Green, Yellow lines).”

For more information on public transportation in Washington ahead of the holiday weekend, visit inauguration.dc.gov/ or wmata.com/service/inauguration-2025.

District of Columbia

D.C. police demoted gay captain for taking parental leave: Lawsuit

Department accused of engaging in ‘effort to harass, retaliate’

Published

22 hours ago

January 15, 2025

Lou Chibbaro Jr.

D.C. Police Captain Paul Hrebenak (right) embraces his husband, James Frasere, and the couple's son. (Courtesy photo)

A gay police captain on Dec. 31 filed a lawsuit in federal court accusing the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department of illegally demoting him and subjecting him to harassment and retaliation for taking parental leave to care for his newborn son.

The 16-page lawsuit filed by Capt. Paul Hrebenak charges that police officials violated the U.S. Family and Medical Leave Act, a similar D.C. family leave law, and the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause by refusing to allow him to return to his position as director of the department’s School Safety Division upon his return from parental leave.

The lawsuit states that he received full permission to take parental leave from his supervisor. Hrebenak’s attorney, Scott Lempert, with the D.C.-based legal group Center for Employment Justice, said Hrebenak’s transfer to another police division against his wishes, which was a far less desirable job, was the equivalent of a demotion, even though it has the same pay grade as his earlier job.

D.C. police spokesperson Thomas Lynch said police will have no comment at this time on the lawsuit. He pointed to a longstanding D.C. police policy of not commenting on pending litigation.

Casey Simmons, a spokesperson for the Office of the D.C. Attorney General, which represents and defends D.C. government agencies against lawsuits, said the Attorney General’s Office also does not comment on ongoing litigation. “So, no comment from us at this time,” she told the Blade.

Hrebenak’s lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, states that “straight” police officers have routinely taken similar family and parental leave to care for newborn children and have not been subjected to the unfair and illegal treatment to which it claims Hrebenak was subjected.

The lawsuit states that Hrebenak has served with distinction as an officer and later as captain since he first joined the force in July 2007. It says after receiving “outstanding reviews and promotions” he was promoted to captain in November 2020 and assigned to the School Safety Division in September 2022.

According to the lawsuit, the School Safety Division assignment allowed him to work a day shift, a needed shift for his recognized disability of Crohn’s Disease, which the lawsuit says is exacerbated by working late hours at night.

The lawsuit points out that Hrebenak disclosed he had Crohn’s Disease at the time he applied for his police job, and it was determined he could carry out his duties as an officer despite this ailment, which was listed as a disability.

“When my husband and I decided to have a child, and I used my allotted D.C. Paid Family Leave and Federal Family Leave, I was punished and removed from a preferred and sought after position as Director of the School Safety Division,” Hrebenak told the Washington Blade in a statement.

“My hope is by filing this lawsuit I can hold MPD and the D.C. Government accountable,” he wrote. “I am the first gay male D.C. Police manager (Captain or Lieutenant) to take advantage of this benefit to welcome a child into the world,” he states, adding, “I want to take this action also so that fellow officers can enjoy their families without the fear of being unfairly treated.”

The lawsuit states that in addition to not being allowed to return to his job as director of the School Safety Division upon his return from leave, “he was also required to work the undesirable midnight shift, as a Watch Commander, requiring him to work from 8:00 p.m. to 4:30 a.m.”

Watch Commander positions are typically given to lieutenants or newly promoted captains, the lawsuit says, and not to more senior captains like Hrebenak.

“Plaintiff’s removal as Director of MPD’s School Safety Division was a targeted, premeditated punishment for taking statutorily protected leave as a gay man,” the lawsuit concludes. “There was no operational need by MPD to remove Plaintiff as Director of MPD’s School Safety Division, a position in which plaintiff very successfully served for years.”

The lawsuit identifies the police official who refused to allow Hrebenak to resume his job as director of the School Safety Division and reassigned him to the less desirable position on the midnight shift as Deputy Chief Andre Wright.

The Blade couldn’t immediately determine whether D.C. Police Chief Pamela Smith, who has expressed strong support for the LGBTQ community and for LGBTQ people working on the police force, would have supported Wright’s actions toward Hrebenak.

The lawsuit adds that Hrebenak’s transfer out of his earlier job to the night shift position “was humiliating and viewed as punishment and a demotion by Plaintiff and his co-workers.”

The lawsuit, which requests a trial by jury, says, “Defendant’s actions were willful and in bad faith, causing Plaintiff to suffer lost wages and benefits, and severe physical, mental, and emotional anguish.”

It calls for his reinstatement as director of the Division of School Safety or assignment to a similar position and $4.3 million in compensatory and punitive damages, including interest, attorney’s fees, and court related costs.

Lempert, Hrebenak’s attorney, said it was too soon to determine whether U.S. District Court Judge Randolph D. Moss, who is presiding over the case, will require the two parties to enter negotiations to reach an out-of-court settlement.

In past cases in which LGBTQ people have filed lawsuits against D.C. government agencies on grounds of discrimination or improper treatment, local LGBTQ activists have called on the D.C. government to reach a fair and reasonable settlement to address the concerns raised by those filing the lawsuits.

Richard Rosendall, former president of the D.C. Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance, said he believes the city is “in the wrong” on this case and should agree to a settlement if the judge calls for settlement negotiations.

“If anyone should be demoted, it is whoever decided to punish Captain Hrebenak for exercising his parental rights,” Rosendall told the Blade. “Equal protection means nothing if it is subject to arbitrary suspension at a supervisor’s whim,” he said.

“Additionally, the rule of law is undermined when those sworn to enforce it act as if they are a law unto themselves,” Rosendall said.

Virginia

Va. House approves resolution to repeal marriage amendment

Two successive legislatures must approve proposal before it goes to voters

Published

1 day ago

January 14, 2025

Staff reports

(Bigstock photo)

The Virginia House of Representatives on Tuesday approved a resolution that seeks to repeal a state constitutional amendment that defines marriage as between a man and a woman.

The resolution that state Del. Mark Sickles (D-Fairfax County) introduced by a 58-35 vote margin. State Sen. Adam Ebbin (D-Alexandria) has proposed an identical measure in the Virginia Senate.

Ebbin and Sickles are both gay.

Voters approved the Marshall-Newman Amendment in 2006.

Same-sex couples have been able to legally marry in Virginia since 2014. Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin last year signed a bill that codified marriage equality in state law.

The General Assembly in 2021 approved a resolution that seeks to repeal the Marshall-Newman Amendment. It must pass in two successive legislatures before it can go to the ballot.

The Senate Privileges and Elections Committee on Tuesday advanced Ebbin’s resolution by a 10-4 vote margin. The House on Tuesday also approved resolutions that would enshrine reproductive rights and restore formerly incarcerated people’s right to vote in the state constitution.