Local
Christian conservatives ‘in driver’s seat’ in Va.
Dems consider lawsuit to force power-sharing as activists fear onslaught of anti-gay bills
Virginia Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling would cast the deciding vote in any tie on bills coming up for a vote, effectively giving Republicans a razor-thin majority in the Senate. (Courtesy photo)
LGBT activists said they were hopeful that the threat of a lawsuit by Democratic members of the Virginia Senate this week would persuade Republicans to share control of the chamber and decrease the chance that it will enact anti-LGBT bills following the GOP gains in last week’s election.
No one disputes the fact that Republicans have gained a one-vote legislative majority in the Virginia Senate after Republican candidates defeated two incumbent Democrats in the 40-member Senate, resulting in a 20-20 split between the two parties.
Under the Virginia Constitution, the lieutenant governor — in this case Republican Bill Bolling — has authority to cast the deciding vote in any tie on bills coming up for a vote, effectively giving Republicans a razor-thin majority in the Senate.
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But Democrats argue that the constitution doesn’t give Bolling authority to vote on non-legislative matters, such as who should be named as chairs of the body’s powerful committees and which party should control the committees. Both sides say the matter could wind up in court if a compromise isn’t reached before the new legislative session begins in the second week of January.
Republicans increased their existing majority in the state’s House of Delegates in the Nov. 8 election. With Republican Robert McDonnell as governor, if Republicans win the dispute over who fully controls the Senate, the conservative-leaning GOP would be in control of all branches of the Virginia government for the first time since the Civil War.
“Virginia is never a place to look for gay-friendly legislation,” said Stephen Farnsworth, professor of political communications at George Mason University and a specialist in Virginia politics. “But what you’re looking at now is a Christian conservative element of the Republican Party that is very much in the driver’s seat going forward.”
Gay Democratic leaders and LGBT activists acknowledge that even if Democrats prevail on the issue of power sharing regarding Senate committees, the Republican majority for votes on legislation means that that the Senate is now far less likely to block anti-gay bills as it did when it was under Democratic control.
“We can certainly expect that there’s going to be a cascade of really unsavory bills flooding over to the Senate from the House as there have been in recent years pertaining to issues of immigration, women’s rights and obviously gay rights, too,” said Nick Benton, editor and publisher of the Falls Church News-Press and board member of LGBT Democrats of Virginia.
“And how many of those bills can be made to die in the Senate at this point becomes a much dicier situation,” Benton said. “There’s no guarantee at all that any of that stuff is going to be beaten back.”
Nearly all news media outlets, including the Washington Post, have reported since last week’s election that Lt. Gov. Bolling’s authority to break a tie vote in the Senate would extend to votes on committee and internal Senate organizational issues as well as votes on bills.
But some Democrats this week said they dispute Republicans’ contention that the lieutenant governor has the power to vote on non-legislative issues.
“Fundamentally, the question is whether under the Virginia Constitution he has the authority to vote on Senate organizational issues as contrasted to legislative matters, substantive matters,” said Claire Gastanaga, legislative counsel and chief lobbyist for Equality Virginia, a statewide LGBT advocacy group.
“I’m not ready to predict exactly what’s going to happen with respect to the issues that we care about,” she said. “We’ll be pursuing Equality Virginia’s agenda as we always have, and once the organizational decisions are made then we’ll know who we needed to be talking to.”
Since committees and their chairs decide which bills reach the Senate floor for a vote, a determination of which party controls the committees will play a key role in deciding which bills are passed, including a bill introduced in past years calling for banning adoptions by gay and lesbian parents.
Democrats note that when there was a similar 20-20 split between the two parties in the Senate in 1996 and 1997, party leaders worked out a power sharing agreement that enabled Republicans and Democrats to chair different committees.
Newly elected Va. State Sen. Adam Ebbin said he plans to introduce a bill to bar employment discrimination against state employees based on sexual orientation and gender identity. (Photo courtesy Adam Ebbin)
House of Delegates member Adam Ebbin (D-Alexandria), the Virginia Legislature’s only openly gay member, won his race last week for a seat in the Virginia Senate, becoming the first out gay in that body.
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Ebbin said this week that he, too, is uncertain about the outcome of the dispute over whether Republicans will gain full control over the Senate committees or whether a power-sharing agreement will be reached. In either case, Ebbin said he plans to introduce a bill calling for banning employment discrimination against state employees based on sexual orientation and gender identity similar to the bill he introduced earlier this year.
The bill passed in the then Democratic-controlled Senate but died in committee in the GOP-controlled House.
Ebbin said he and LGBT allies in the Senate and House will do all they can to block anti-gay bills in the 2012 legislative session. But similar to Benton, Ebbin said the ability to block hostile bills will be more difficult under a GOP-controlled Senate.
“In the past, we’ve been able to count on the Senate to thwart anti-gay legislation passed by the House,” he said. “We can’t count on the Senate to do that in the next legislative session. I’m not saying that things won’t get killed in the Senate. It’s just that we can’t absolutely count on it.”
Ebbin said that in addition to a possible bill to ban gay adoptions, conservative GOP lawmakers could bring up other hostile bills that either surfaced or had been proposed in past years but died in committee. Among them were calls for banning Gay-Straight Alliance clubs in the state’s public schools and a call for banning colleges in the state from adopting non-discrimination polices related to sexual orientation and gender identity.
Ebbin said that although it would be unlikely, anti-gay groups might also attempt to persuade the legislature to repeal the only pro-gay bills it has ever passed – separate measures in 2005 and 2010 that removed an arcane state law that prohibited private insurance companies from selling health and life insurance policies to same-sex couples.
Farnsworth, the George Mason University professor, noted that virtually all Republican candidates in Virginia this year stressed economic and jobs-related issues along with their disagreements with the Obama administration over the economy. He said few if any of the GOP candidates raised social issues, such as gay rights, during their campaigns.
“It will be interesting to see just how the Republican unified government system operates in Virginia,” he said. “The lessons that Republicans have learned from the experiences in Wisconsin and Ohio and other places is that overreaching, offering up polarizing messages can be counterproductive.”
He added, “Careful Republicans with their eyes on the future may be hesitant to go too far in the conservative direction and risk a backlash.”
Are moderate Republicans the answer?
LGBT activists were hopeful that more moderate Republicans would join Sen. Tommy Norment (R-Williamsburg), the current minority leader who’s in line to become Republican majority leader. Norment was the only Republican in the Senate to vote for the state employment non-discrimination bill earlier this year when the Democratic-controlled Senate passed the measure.
Tiffany Joslyn, president of LGBT Democrats of Virginia, said she doubts that very many Republican lawmakers in the state would join Norment in backing LGBT supportive bills.
“I have no doubt they will do the same thing that they always do,” she said. “They preach moderation, they preach jobs, and then they get into office and they govern from the far right and to their far-right base.”
Joslyn called on Log Cabin Republicans of Virginia to join her group and Equality Virginia in urging more GOP lawmakers to support legislation seeking to bar LGBT discrimination in the workplace and in other areas.
Log Cabin Republicans of Virginia President David Lampo couldn’t be immediately reached this week. Christian Berle, deputy executive director of the national Log Cabin Republicans organization, said both the national and Virginia group would continue their ongoing efforts to encourage Republican lawmakers to support LGBT equality in all levels of government.
Berle also disputed predictions by gay Democrats that a GOP-controlled Virginia Legislature would result in the passage of anti-gay bills.
“They said the same thing would happen with Gov. McDonnell, that all kinds of bad things would happen,” said Berle. “It didn’t happen.”
He criticized Equality Virginia for taking the position that “only Democrats” could be counted on to support LGBT equality in the state and expressed concern that more LGBT advocates didn’t support gay Republican candidate Patrick Forrest’s race for a state Senate seat in the Northern Virginia city of Reston in this year’s election.
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Gay Democrats said most LGBT activists didn’t support Forrest because he ran against incumbent Sen. Janet Howell, one of the LGBT community’s strongest allies in the Virginia Legislature.
Virginia
McPike prevails in ‘firehouse’ Dem primary for Va. House of Delegates
Gay Alexandria Council member expected to win 5th District seat
Gay Alexandria City Council member Kirk McPike emerged as the clearcut winner in a hastily called Jan. 20 “firehouse” Democratic primary for a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates representing Alexandria.
McPike, who was one of two gay candidates running in the four-candidate primary, received 1,279 votes or 60.5 percent, far ahead of gay public school teacher Gregory Darrall, a political newcomer who received 60 votes or 3 percent.
Former Alexandria City School Board member Eileen Cassidy Rivera came in second place with 508 votes or 24 percent and Northern Virginia criminal law defense attorney Chris Leibig finished in third place with 265 votes or 12.5 percent.
Each of the candidates expressed strong support for LGBTQ-related issues.
With less than a week’s notice, Democratic Party officials in Alexandria called the primary to select a Democratic nominee to run in the Feb. 10 special election to fill the 5th District House of Delegates seat being vacated by state Del. Elizabeth Bennett-Parker (D-Alexandria).
Bennett-Parker won the Democratic nomination for the Virginia State Senate seat being vacated by gay state Sen. Adam Ebbin (D-Alexandria), who is resigning from his seat to take a position in the administration of Democratic Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, who took office on Jan. 17.
Bennett-Parker won the nomination for Ebbin’s state Senate seat in yet another firehouse primary on Jan. 13 in which she defeated three other candidates, including gay former state Del. Mark Levine.
McPike, a longtime LGBTQ rights advocate, first won election to the Alexandria City Council in 2021. He has served for 13 years as chief of staff for gay U.S. Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) and has remained in that position during his tenure on the Alexandria Council. He told the Washington Blade he will continue as chief of staff until next month, when he will resign from that position before taking office in the House of Delegates.
He received the endorsement of Ebbin, U.S. Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), and the LGBTQ Victory Fund in his race for the 5th District Va. House seat. Being an overwhelmingly Democratic district, virtually all political observers expect McPike to win the Feb. 10 special election.
He will be running against Republican nominee Mason Butler, a local business executive who emerged as the only GOP candidate running for the delegate seat.
“Thank you to the voters of Alexandria for choosing me as the Democratic nominee in the House of Delegates District 5,” McPike said in a statement released shortly after the vote count was completed. “It is an incredible honor to have the opportunity to fight for our community and its values in Richmond,” he said.
“I look forward to continuing to work to address our housing crisis, the challenge of climate change, and the damaging impacts of the Trump administration on the immigrant families, LGBTQ+ Virginians, and federal employees who call Alexandria home,” he stated.
He praised Ebbin for his longstanding support for the LGBTQ community in the Virginia Legislature and added, “If elected to the House of Delegates in the Feb. 10 general election, I will continue to fight to protect the rights and freedoms of LGBTQ+ Virginians from my new position in Richmond.”
Gay candidate Darrall’s campaign website said he is a “proud progressive, lifelong educator, and labor leader running to put people first.” It says he is a political newcomer “with more than 20 years in the classroom” as a teacher who played a key role in the successful unionization of Fairfax Public Schools.
“He is a proud member and staunch supporter of the LGBTQIA+ community,” his website statement said.
District of Columbia
Sold-out crowd turns out for 10th annual Caps Pride night
Gay Men’s Chorus soloist sings National Anthem, draws cheers
A sold-out crowd of 18,347 turned out on Jan. 17 for the 10th annual Pride Night at the Washington Capitals hockey game held at D.C.’s Capital One Arena.
Although LGBTQ Capitals fans were disappointed that the Capitals lost the game to the visiting Florida Panthers, they were treated to a night of celebration with Pride-related videos showing supportive Capitals players and fans projected on the arena’s giant video screen throughout the game.
The game began when Dana Nearing, a member of the Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, sang the National Anthem, drawing applause from all attendees.
The event also served as a fundraiser for the LGBTQ groups Wanda Alston Foundation, which provides housing services to homeless LGBTQ youth, and You Can Play, a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing LGBTQ inclusion in sports.
“Amid the queer community’s growing love affair with hockey, I’m incredibly honored and proud to see our hometown Capitals continue to celebrate queer joy in such a visible and meaningful way,” said Alston Foundation Executive Director Cesar Toledo.
Capitals spokesperson Nick Grossman said a fundraising raffle held during the game raised $14,760 for You Can Play. He said a fundraising auction for the Alston Foundation organized by the Capitals and its related Monumental Sports and Entertainment Foundation would continue until Thursday, Jan. 22
A statement on the Capitals website says among the items being sold in the auction were autographed Capitals player hockey sticks with rainbow-colored Pride tape wrapped around them, which Capitals players used in their pre-game practice on the ice.
Although several hundred people turned out for a pre-game Pride “block party” at the District E restaurant and bar located next to the Capital One Arena, it couldn’t immediately be determined how many Pride night special tickets for the game were sold.
“While we don’t disclose specific figures related to special ticket offers, we were proud to host our 10th Pride night and celebrate the LGBTQ+ community,” Capitals spokesperson Grossman told the Washington Blade.
Virginia
Two gay candidates running in ‘firehouse’ Va. House of Delegates primary in Alexandria
Kirk McPike, Gregory Darrall hope to succeed delegate vying for Ebbin’s seat
Gay Alexandria City Council member Kirk McPike and gay public school teacher Gregory Darrall, who serves as vice president of the Fairfax County Federation of Teachers, are among four candidates running in a Jan. 20 “firehouse” Democratic primary for a seat in the Virginia House of Delegates.
With less than a week’s notice, Democratic Party officials in Alexandria called the primary to select a Democratic nominee to run in a Feb. 10 special election to fill the 5th House District seat being vacated by state Del. Elizabeth Bennett-Parker (D-Alexandria).
Bennett-Parker won the Democratic nomination for the Virginia Senate seat being vacated by gay state Sen. Adam Ebbin (D-Alexandria), who is resigning from the seat to take a position in the administration of Democratic Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, who took office on Jan. 17.
Bennett-Parker won the nomination for the state Senate seat in yet another firehouse primary on Jan. 13 in which she defeated three other candidates, including gay former state Del. Mark Levine.
The Jan. 20 primary in which McPike and Darrall are competing will take place from 8:30 a.m. to 7 p.m. in two polling places in Alexandria: the Charles E. Beatley Jr. Central Library at 5005 Duke St. and the Charles Houston Recreation Center at 901 Wythe St.
The other two candidates running are former Alexandria City School Board member Eileen Cassidy Rivera and criminal law defense attorney Chris Leibig.
McPike, who first won election to the Alexandria City Council in 2021, served for 13 years as chief of staff for gay U.S. Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.) prior to winning election to the Alexandria City Council.
“Now, Kirk is ready to bring his experience to Richmond to keep improving the lives of all Virginians as our delegate for House District 5,” his campaign website says. His website writeup says he and his husband, Cantor Jason Kaufman, have lived in Alexandria’s Seminary Hill neighborhood for 15 years.
“As delegate, we can count on Kirk to keep delivering for us — helping Virginia maintain our commitments to our schools, our first responders, and our efforts to address climate change, housing affordability, and infrastructure,” the website statement says.
McPike, a longtime LGBTQ rights supporter and advocate, has been endorsed by Ebbin and U.S. Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.). Beyer said in a statement that McPike “has a proven track record of delivering results for Alexandrians.” The LGBTQ+ Victory Fund, which raises money for LGBTQ candidates running for public office, has also endorsed McPike.
Darrall’s campaign website says he is a “proud progressive, lifelong educator, and labor leader running to put people first.” It says he is a political newcomer “with more than 20 years in the classroom” as a teacher who played a key role in the successful unionization of Fairfax Public Schools.
“He is a proud member and staunch supporter of the LGBTQIA+ community,” his website statement says. It says he met his husband Jose while living in Miami and the two operated a small business in South Florida for a decade before moving to Alexandria in 2015. It adds that Darrall is “fluent in Spanish, loves walking Alexandria’s neighborhoods, and is driven by a deep belief in fairness, equality, and strengthening our democracy from the ground up.”
The Alexandria Republican City Committee nominated local business executive Mason Butler as the Republican nominee for the House of Delegates seat in the Feb. 10 special election after he emerged as the only GOP candidate running for the seat, according to the Alexandria Brief publication. He will face the Democratic winner in the Jan. 20 firehouse primary.
“As Delegate for House District 5, I will be a fierce advocate for LGBT equality in the Virginia General Assembly,” Rivera stated. She praised Spanberger for signing an LGBTQ-supportive executive order on her first day in office.
Rivera added, “I will fight alongside her to restore and enforce the Virginia Values Act, advance marriage equality, and ensure robust nondiscrimination protections in housing, employment, healthcare, and public accommodations.”
In his own statement, Leibig said, “I am as strong a supporter for LGBTQ rights as you can get.” Noting his role as a defense attorney specializing in criminal law, he added, “I regularly get calls from outside the commonwealth about defending trans people in situations where they are being treated terribly.”
He noted he was among the attorneys working on the first lawsuit against the Bureau of Prisons in support of “gender reaffirming surgery for an inmate.” He said he represented transgender former U.S. Army soldier Chelsea Manning in 2019 and was among those advocating for improved conditions for trans people in prisons.
“People of this community can count on me to support this community,” he said in referring to the LGBTQ community.
The Washington Blade couldn’t immediately reach GOP candidate Butler, who is running in the Feb. 10 special election but not in the Jan. 20 firehouse primary.
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