Local
ELECTION ROUNDUP: Va. elects first openly gay senator
Ebbin wins big; gay S.F. mayoral candidate trails
Adam Ebbin (Photo courtesy Adam Ebbin)
Democrat Adam Ebbin, a gay man who has served in the Virginia House of Delegates since 2004, won election on Tuesday to the Virginia Senate, becoming the state’s first openly gay senator.
Ebbin defeated Republican challenger and political newcomer Timothy McGhee by a margin of 64 percent to 35 percent. He ran in a district with a solid Democratic majority that includes parts of Alexandria, Arlington and Fairfax counties.
“I am honored by the trust the voters have showed in me,” Ebbin said in a statement. “During the campaign, I listened to the voters’ concerns and will work on behalf of the values we all share: improving our public schools, expanding our transit system and cleaning up Virginia’s environment. I will make sure their voices are heard.”
Ebbin emerged as an outspoken advocate for LGBT equality during his tenure as the state’s only out gay member of the House of Delegates. He said one of his top priorities in the Senate will be to push legislation to ban job discrimination against state government employees because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
In a separate race, gay Republican Patrick Forrest lost his bid to unseat Virginia State Sen. Janet Howell (D-Reston), a longtime supporter of LGBT rights. Forrest, who had been endorsed by the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, was vying to become the first openly LGBT Republican to win election to a state legislature.
ALSO IN THE BLADE: GAY TAKOMA PARK MAYOR RE-ELECTED
He created a stir when he and his campaign accused the Howell campaign of using “gay baiting” tactics to discourage Republican voters from supporting him. His campaign identified a Democratic Party volunteer who admitted to a Forrest campaign worker that she told voters that Forrest was gay and would likely promote a “gay agenda” for the state’s public schools.
Howell said the party volunteer was not part of her campaign and was dismissed from her role as a party canvasser when Howell learned of the allegation. Gay Democrats backing Howell complained that the Forrest campaign and the Victory Fund were unfairly linking Howell to the gay baiting claim.
Terry Mansberger, chair of the Virginia Democratic Party’s LGBT Caucus, expressed concern that the Victory Fund’s support of Forrest was hurting LGBT rights efforts in the state because a win for Forrest and just one other Republican would lead to a GOP takeover of the State Senate.
LGBT Democratic activists pointed out that a solid majority of Senate Democrats support LGBT rights. They noted that most Senate Republicans and Republican candidates seeking Senate seats strongly oppose LGBT rights initiatives and, in some cases, have advocated for anti-gay laws, including a bill to prohibit gays from adopting children.
With the apparent loss of two other Democratic seats, Republicans were poised to win control of the Senate independently of Forrest’s race. Republicans control the House of Delegates.
Ebbin has said his efforts to push LGBT supportive bills and block anti-gay measures would be in jeopardy if the State Senate flips from Democratic to Republican control in the 2012 legislative session.
In another Virginia electoral contest, gay candidate Michael Sutphin appears to have won his race for a seat on the Blacksburg, Va., Town Council by a solid margin. With results in for nine out of the town’s 10 precincts as of early Wednesday morning, Sutphin came in second place in a race where five candidates were competing for three seats up for election.
Sutphin is poised to become the first known openly gay candidate to win election to public office in a part of the state outside Northern Virginia, which is a D.C. suburb.
In a hotly contested race on the other side of the country, gay former San Francisco Supervisor Bevan Dufty was in seventh place in his bid to become San Francisco’s first out gay mayor. In a mayoral contest with 16 candidates, Dufty won just 4.7 percent of the “first choice” vote and was trailing far behind frontrunner Ed Lee, the incumbent mayor, who had 31.4 percent of the “first choice” vote.
Under San Francisco’s “ranked choice” voting system, voters cast ballots for their first, second and third choice for mayor. If no candidate received at least 51 percent of the vote, the candidate with the least number of votes is eliminated and the city counts the second choice votes of that candidate. The process is repeated until a candidate obtains a 51 percent majority.
Second place candidate John Avalos had 18.7 percent of first choice votes and third place candidate, City Attorney Dennis Herrera, had 11.3 percent of the first choice vote. Herrera, a strong supporter of LGBT rights, had been considered Dufty’s strongest competitor for LGBT votes.
Dufty has said he expected the vote count to go to at least one or more rounds before someone emerged as the winner. He said he had a good shot at winning in a second or later round of vote counting.
But observers say Lee remains the strong favorite to win a later round due to his strong showing in the “first choice” vote.
ALSO FROM THE BLADE: LGBT ELECTION NIGHT VICTORIES FROM AROUND THE NATION
The Comings & Goings column is about sharing the professional successes of our community. We want to recognize those landing new jobs, new clients for their business, joining boards of organizations and other achievements. Please share your successes with us at [email protected].
The Comings & Goings column also invites LGBTQ+ college students to share their successes with us. If you have been elected to a student government position, gotten an exciting internship, or are graduating and beginning your career with a great job, let us know so we can share your success.
Congratulations to R. Warren Gill III, M.Div., M.A. on being appointed as the development manager at HIPS. Upon his appointment, Gill said, “For as long as I’ve lived in Washington, D.C., I’ve followed and admired the life-saving work HIPS does in our communities. I’m proud to join the staff and help strengthen the financial support that sustains this work.”
Gill will lead fundraising strategy, donor engagement, and institutional partnerships. HIPS promotes the health, rights, and dignity of individuals and communities impacted by sexual exchange and/or drug use due to choice, coercion, or circumstance. HIPS provides compassionate harm reduction services, advocacy, and community engagement that is respectful, non-judgmental, and affirms and honors individual power and agency.
Gill has built a career at the intersection of progressive politics, advocacy, and nonprofit leadership. Previously he served as director of communications at AIDS United, supporting national efforts to end the HIV epidemic. Prior to that he had roles including; being press secretary for Sen. Bernie Sanders during the 2016 presidential primary, and working with the General Board of Church and Society, the United Methodist Church, the denomination’s social justice and advocacy arm.
Gill earned his bachelor’s degree in philosophy and religious studies, Jewish Studies, Stockton University; his master’s degree in political communication from American University, where his graduate research focused on values-based messaging and cognitive linguistics; and his master of Divinity degree from the Pacific School of Religion.
District of Columbia
Judge denies D.C. request to dismiss gay police captain’s anti-bias lawsuit
MPD accused of illegally demoting officer for taking family leave to care for newborn child
A U.S. District Court judge on Jan. 21 denied a request by attorneys representing the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department to dismiss a lawsuit filed by a gay captain accusing police officials of illegally demoting him for taking parental leave to join his husband in caring for their newborn son.
The 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 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.
It says police officials transferred Hrebenak to another police division against his wishes, which was a far less desirable job and was the equivalent of a demotion, even though it had the same pay grade as his earlier job.
In response to a motion filed by attorneys with the Office of the D.C. Attorney General, which represents and defends D.C. government agencies against lawsuits, Judge Randolph D. Moss agreed to dismiss seven of the lawsuit’s 14 counts or claims but left in place six counts.
Scott Lempert, the attorney representing Hrebenak, said he and Hrebenak agreed to drop one of the 14 counts prior to the Jan. 21 court hearing.
“He did not dismiss the essential claims in this case,” Lempert told the Washington Blade. “So, we won is the short answer. We defeated the motion to dismiss the case.”
Gabriel Shoglow, a spokesperson for the Office of the D.C. Attorney General, said the office has a policy of not commenting on pending litigation and it would not comment on the judge’s ruling upholding six of the lawsuit’s initial 14 counts.
In issuing his ruling from the bench, Moss gave Lempert the option of filing an amended complaint by March 6 to seek the reinstatement of the counts he dismissed. He gave attorneys for the D.C. attorney general’s office a deadline of March 20 to file a response to an amended complaint.
Lempert told the Blade he and Hrebenak have yet to decide whether to file an amended complaint or whether to ask the judge to move the case ahead to a jury trial, which they initially requested.
In its 26-page motion calling for dismissal of the case, filed on May 30, 2025, D.C. Office of the Attorney General attorneys argue that the police department has legal authority to transfer its officers, including captains, to a different job. It says that Hrebenak’s transfer to a position of watch commander at the department’s First District was fully equivalent in status to his job as director of the School Safety Division.
“The Watch Commander position is not alleged to have changed plaintiff’s rank of captain or his benefits or pay, and thus plaintiff has not plausibly alleged that he was put in a non-equivalent position,” the motion to dismiss states.
“Thus, his reassignment is not a demotion,” it says. “And the fact that his shift changed does not mean that the position is not equivalent to his prior position. The law does not require that every single aspect of the positions be the same.”
Hrebenak’s lawsuit states that “straight” police officers have routinely taken similar family and parental leave to care for a newborn child and have not been transferred to a different job. 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.
Among other things, the lawsuit notes that Hrebenak had a designated reserved parking space for his earlier job and lost the parking space for the job to which he was transferred.
“Plaintiff’s removal as director at MPD’s School Safety Division was a targeted, premeditated punishment for his taking statutorily protected leave as a gay man,” the lawsuit states. “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,” it says.
In another action to strengthen Hrebenak’s opposition to the city’s motion to dismiss the case, Lempert filed with the court on Jan. 15 a “Notice of Supplemental Authority” that included two controversial reports that Lempert said showed that former D.C. Police Chief Pamela Smith put in place a policy of involuntary police transfers “to effectively demote and end careers of personnel who had displeased Chief Smith and or others in MPD leadership.”
One of the reports was prepared by the Republican members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the other was prepared by the office of Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for D.C. appointed by President Donald Trump.
Both reports allege that Smith, who resigned from her position as chief effective Dec. 31, pressured police officials to change crime reporting data to make it appear that the number of violent crimes was significantly lower than it actually was by threatening to transfer them to undesirable positions in the department. Smith has denied those claims.
“These findings support plaintiff’s arguments that it was the policy or custom of MPD to inflect involuntary transfers on MPD personnel as retaliation for doing or saying something in which leadership disapproved,” Lempert says in his court filing submitting the two reports.
“As shown, many officers suffered under this pervasive custom, including Capt. Hrebenak,” he stated. “Accordingly, by definition, transferred positions were not equivalent to officers’ previous positions,” he added.
Virginia
LGBTQ rights at forefront of 2026 legislative session in Va.
Repeal of state’s marriage amendment a top priority
With 2026 ramping up, LGBTQ rights are at the forefront of Virginia politics.
The repeal of Virginia’s constitutional amendment that defines marriage as between a man and a woman is a top legislative priority for activists and advocacy groups.
The Virginia Senate on Jan. 17 by a 26-13 vote margin approved outgoing state Sen. Adam Ebbin (D-Alexandria)’s resolution that would repeal the Marshall-Newman Amendment. The Virginia House of Delegates earlier this month passed it.
Two successive legislatures must approve the resolution before it can go to the ballot.
The resolution passed in 2025. Voters are expected to consider repealing the amendment on Nov. 3.
The Virginia General Assembly opened with an introduction of a two-year budget — Virginia’s budget runs biannually.
In 2024 some funding was allocated to LGBTQ causes, and others were passed over. This year’s proposed budget leaves room for funding for a host of LGBTQ opportunities. One specific priority that Equality Virginia is promoting would ensure the state budget expands healthcare for LGBTQ individuals and extending gender affirming care.
Equality Virginia Communications Director Reed Williams told the Washington Blade the organization is also focused on passing three main budget amendments, and ensuring “LGBTQ+ students and their teachers have resources to navigate and address mental health challenges in K-12 schools.”
Along with ensuring school training, the organization wants funding in hopes of “establishing enhanced competency training for Virginia’s 988 Lifeline counselors and support staff to provide affirming care for LGBTQ+ youth.” This comes after the Trump-Vance administration shut down the specific hotline for LGBTQ young people that callers could previously reach if they called 988.
On a federal level, protections and health care access for LGBTQ people has taken a hit, as the Trump-Vance administration has continued to issue executive orders affecting the health care system. LGBTQ people no longer have federal legal health care protections, so local and state politics has become even more important for LGBTQ rights groups.
Equality Virginia has urged its supporters to call their local senators and stress the importance of voting to expand health care protections for LGBTQ people. The organization also plans to hold information sessions and a lobby day on Feb. 2.
Equality Virginia is tracking bills on its website.
Convert rent check into an automatic investment, Marjorie!
Swing actor Thomas Netter covers five principal parts in ‘Clue’
Queer liberation is your liberation
A ‘Battle’ we can’t avoid
LGBTQ Ugandans targeted ahead of country’s elections
Faith programming remains key part of Creating Change Conference
McPike prevails in ‘firehouse’ Dem primary for Va. House of Delegates
LGBTQ Iranians join anti-government protests
The power of no
