National
Bachmann’s record is no laughing matter
Tea Party fave opposes LGBT rights; husband backs ‘ex-gay’ therapy
The anti-gay rhetoric and voting record of Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) came under scrutiny this week in the wake of her announcement that she would run for the White House in 2012.
In a speech last week in her hometown of Waterloo, Iowa, the Tea Party favorite pledged to continue advancing conservative causes as she formally declared her candidacy.
“I want to bring a voice, your voice, to the White House, just as I have brought your voice to the halls of Congress to secure the promise of the future for our generation and generations to come,” Bachmann said.
But based on her voting record in Congress since she started representing Minnesota in the U.S. House in 2007, a Bachmann presidency would likely be bad news for LGBT Americans.
In addition to voting against “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal and opposing the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, she also opposed hate crimes legislation.
Additionally, Bachmann has called for passage of a federal constitutional amendment that would ban same-sex marriage throughout the country, even though she was elected to Congress too late to vote on such a measure when it came before lawmakers.
As a state senator in Minnesota, Bachmann sponsored legislation to make a ban on same-sex marriage part of the state constitution. The amendment that Minnesota voters will vote on in 2012 is similar to the measure she proposed at that time.
Michael Cole-Schwartz, spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign, predicted that a Bachmann presidency would mark a major setback for LGBT rights.
“A President Bachmann would mean a wholesale reversal from the gains we’ve seen over the past few years,” Cole-Schwartz said. “Not only would we see policy positions that hurt our families, the level of anti-LGBT rhetoric would no doubt rise as would the use of our community as a political wedge issue.”
The Bachmann campaign didn’t respond to the Washington Blade’s request for comment.
Bachmann could become a major player in the 2012 presidential campaign if she performs well in the early primary states and some experts have speculated that she would make a strong vice presidential pick. A favorite among the Tea Party wing of the GOP, Bachmann is already polling well in her home state of Iowa, where social conservatives tend to fare well in the GOP caucus.
According to a poll published June 26, Bachmann is nearly tied in Iowa with frontrunner, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. The Des Moines Register Iowa Poll found that Romney was favored by 23 percent of likely Republican caucus-goers while Bachmann was supported by 22 percent.
Additionally, a poll published Wednesday by Public Policy Polling found Bachmann would place a strong second in the New Hampshire primary, even though the GOP in the state has more libertarian leanings. Romney leads in the state with the support of 25 percent of respondents, but Bachmann comes in second at 18 percent. She jumped 14 points in the last three months.
Bachmann has said recently that marriage should be left to the states to decide. However, she has always reiterated her support for the Federal Marriage Amendment — a contradiction because ratification of that measure would define marriage at the federal level.
During her appearance June 13 in the Republican presidential debate, Bachmann called for enactment of a Federal Marriage Amendment as she said she wouldn’t interfere with New Hampshire’s law allowing same-sex marriage.
“I do support a constitutional amendment on marriage between a man and a woman, but I would not be going into the states to overturn their state law,” Bachmann said.
Also during the debate, Bachmann said she would have kept “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in place.
“I would want to confer with our commanders-in-chief and also with the Joint Chiefs of Staff because I want to know how it was being implemented and if it had the detrimental effects that have been suggested will come,” Bachmann said.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen came out in favor of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” repeal in February. Some of the military service chiefs — most notably Marine Corps Commandant Gen. James Amos — opposed repeal of the military’s gay ban before Congress acted to lift the law, but each has said they can implement open service.
R. Clarke Cooper, executive director of Log Cabin Republicans, acknowledged his organization and Bachmann don’t “see eye-to-eye” on LGBT issues, but said her more nuanced rhetoric on marriage was noteworthy.
“We’ve been arguing all along that DOMA is incursion on states rights,” Cooper said. “It’s interesting to see her kind of move in that direction because that’s a nuance. It doesn’t mean that she’s all of a sudden a champion of fundamental rights by any means, but it’s interesting that she’s being forced to shift.”
In addition to her anti-gay stances on marriage and the military, Bachmann has also engaged in anti-gay political rhetoric throughout her career.
The slightly more nuanced — if contradictory — position that Bachmman has adopted on marriage is different from what she previously stated. According to the Washington Post, Bachmann has called marriage “probably the biggest issue that will impact our state and our nation in the last, at least, 30 years.”
Additionally, in the fight to push for a same-sex marriage ban in Minnesota in 2004, Bachmann said a member of her family is gay and called it “a very sad life. It’s part of Satan.” According to the Post, her stepsister, Helen LaFave, is gay and in 2006 publicly opposed the ban.
Scott Dibble, a gay Democratic state senator in Minnesota, said in a Post interview that Bachmann argued that advancing gay rights could result in children being “lured into trying homosexuality out” and that “the reason for high divorce rates in Scandinavian countries was that they offered equality” to LGBT people.
But Bachmann could be overshadowed in her anti-gay views by her husband, Marcus Bachmann, a therapist who runs a faith-based counseling center. His practice reportedly offers discredited conversion therapy for LGBT people, although he’s said that he doesn’t try to convert gay people who say “they want to stay homosexual.”
In an interview last year with a Christian radio show, Marcus Bachmann compared gays to “barbarians” and said they “need to be educated, need to be disciplined.”
“Just because someone feels it or thinks it doesn’t mean that we are supposed to go down that road,” he said. “That’s what is called the sinful nature. We have a responsibility as parents and as authority figures not to encourage such thoughts and feelings from moving into the action steps.”
Marcus Bachmann is close to his wife’s political campaign. According to the Washington Post, Bachmann recently called himself his wife’s “strategist” and has acted as her media planner, travel assistant and personal shopper.
Despite Bachmann’s anti-gay record, Log Cabin’s Cooper said the country has grown more supportive of LGBT rights since the last presidential election and the GOP has noticed.
“Looking at where are we are in 2011 heading off the 2012 cycle, it’s a much different world than it was in the ’08 cycle, and a far different world than it was in ’04 and 2000,” Cooper said. “We’re in a much different state as a country than we have ever been, and it is going to force campaigns to evaluate these issues.”
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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