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D.C. marriage law engages fewer than predicted

Projections far exceed number of weddings, local revenue and jobs

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When more than 100 same-sex couples lined up outside the H. Carl Moultrie Courthouse of the Superior Court of the District of Columbia on the morning of March 3, 2010, to apply for marriage licenses on the first day of implementation of the city’s Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Equality Amendment of 2009, celebration filled the air – and D.C. small business Hello Cupcake distributed a box of cupcakes to each couple.

Emblematic of efforts by wedding-related businesses to launch affinity marketing efforts and sales solicitations targeting this new market at the initiation of marriage equality in the nation’s capital, the local confectionery had coordinated the promotional giveaway with gay D.C. Council member David Catania (I-At-Large), who helped distribute the complimentary treats that morning outside the courthouse.

Catania had been the lead sponsor of the long awaited, strategically delayed and carefully constructed legislation, co-sponsored and first approved in one of two required votes by 10 of his 12 Council colleagues two years ago this week.

Council testimony and media reports during consideration of the modern marriage bill touted extraordinary local economic benefits to come once gay and lesbian couples were permitted to marry in Washington.

Unfortunately, although no commercial benefit was — or should be — required to justify the expansion of the civil right to marry, those projections have proven overstated and the level of anticipated revenue for local businesses has not materialized.

The shortfall is due to both unrealistic economic forecasting by some marriage equality advocates and a notably lower number of same-sex marriages performed in the District than projected.

The most widely ballyhooed and referenced analysis was provided by the Williams Institute, a privately financed think tank focusing on sexual orientation law and public policy at the UCLA School of Law that has released similar reports for a number of states and is the national media go-to source on the subject. D.C. Chief Financial Officer Natwar Gandhi also issued a report with similar findings.

The group’s report indicated that extending marriage to same-sex couples would boost the District’s economy by more than $52.2 million over three years and generate increases in local government tax and fee revenues by $5.4 million and create approximately 700 new jobs.

The Institute’s financial projections were based on 14,432 same-sex couples marrying in D.C. in the first three years – including 1,882 resident couples and 12,550 couples from surrounding jurisdictions and the rest of the country. District CFO Gandhi had suggested as many as 21,000 lesbian and gay couples might marry in the city.

During the first year of the new law, a reported 6,600 licenses for all couples were issued. Although D.C. does not distinguish between same-sex and heterosexual marriages, only 3,100 licenses were issued during the prior year and in recent history the number of marriage licenses varied by only 100 or less from year to year. Consequently, the introduction of same-sex marriage in D.C. appears to have more than doubled the number of marriage licenses issued during the first year of the expanded law.

However, the resulting estimated number of same-sex couples married in D.C. during the initial 12 months represents only approximately 60 percent of the Institute’s projected total of nearly 5,500 in the first year.

Based on a requested special statistical summary provided this week by the Governmental and Public Relations office of D.C. Courts for the subsequent partial year current period, the number of same-sex marriages will likely decline to slightly more than 2,500 during the second year. As the “pent-up demand” of local and regional gay and lesbian couples desiring to marry is fulfilled, a more significant decline is anticipated for the third year.

As a result, the total number of same-sex couples expected to marry during the first three years of the law will likely represent little more than half the number predicted.

The projections for revenue to be accrued by both local businesses and the District government are also overstated, based on an estimated average wedding expenditure for D.C. gay and lesbian resident couples of nearly $10,000, with non-resident couples spending less. Although the study assumed that local same-sex couples would spend only 25 percent of the recession-adjusted $38,180 average spent by D.C. opposite-sex couples, this cost figure is not common practice or a realistic financial assessment of many same-sex weddings.

The projected creation of 700 new local jobs is the more unsupportable advance claim, resulting from political theoreticians crunching abstract, and oversized, numbers in a way foreign to experienced common-sense business owners. By comparison, each of the six large Walmart stores to soon open in the District will each employ only 300 workers.

The successful long-term political strategy undertaken by community leaders to ensure that D.C. would join the small number of states adopting marriage equality to date benefits everyone in both direct and indirect ways and is a contemporary cultural asset for the city, its business environment and employee talent attractiveness. Only the anticipated number of resulting marriages and the promise of significant direct revenues benefiting the local business community and the District’s tax coffers have proven to be the sole aspects of this historic achievement divorced from reality.

Mark Lee is a local small business manager and long-time community business advocate. Reach him at [email protected].

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Can we still celebrate Fourth of July this year?

President Donald Trump wants to be king

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(Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)

Independence Day, commonly known as the Fourth of July, is a federal holiday commemorating the ratification of the Declaration of Independence by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, establishing the United States of America. The delegates of the Second Continental Congress declared the 13 colonies are no longer subject (and subordinate) to the monarch of Britain, King George III and were now united, free, and independent states. The Congress voted to approve independence by passing the Lee resolution on July 2, and adopted the Declaration of Independence two days later, on July 4. 

Today we have a felon in the White House, who wants to be a king, and doesn’t know what the Declaration of Independence means. Each day we see more erosion of what our country has fought to stand for over the years. We began with a country run by white men, where slavery was accepted, and where women weren’t included in our constitution, or allowed to vote. We have come far, and next year will celebrate 250 years. Slowly, but surely, we have moved forward. That is until Nov. 5, 2024, when the nation elected the felon who now sits in the Oval Office. 

There are some who say they didn’t know what he would do when they voted for him. They are the ones who were either fooled, believing his lies, or just weren’t smart enough to read the blueprint which laid out what he would do, Project 2025. It is there for everyone to see. There should be no surprise at what he is doing to the country, and the world. Last Friday his Supreme Court, and yes, it is his, the three people he had confirmed in his first term, gave him permission to be the king he wants to be. The kind of king our Declaration of Independence said we were renouncing. A man who with the stroke of a pen can ruin thousands of lives, and change the course of America’s future. A man who has set back our country by decades, in just a few months.

So, I understand why many are suggesting there is nothing to celebrate this Fourth of July. How do we have parties, and fireworks, celebrating the 249th year of our independence when so many are being sidelined and harmed by the felon and his MAGA sycophants in the Congress, and on the Supreme Court. Yes, there are those celebrating all he is doing. Those who want to pretend transgender people don’t exist, and put their lives in danger; those who think it’s alright to take away a women’s right to control her body, and her healthcare; those who think parents should be able to interfere on a daily basis with their children’s schooling and wipe out the existence of gay people for them. Those who pretend there was a mandate in the last election, when it was only won by about 1 percent. Those who think disparaging veterans, firing them, and taking away their healthcare, is ok. Those in the LGBTQ community like Log Cabin Republicans, who think supporting a racist, sexist, homophobe is the right thing to do.

So, what do we, as decent caring people, do this Fourth of July. What do we say to those who are being harmed as we celebrate. What do we say to those trans people, those women, those immigrants who came here to escape their own dictators, and are now finding they have come to a country with its own would-be dictator. I say to them, please don’t give up on America. Don’t give up on the possibility decent loving people in our country will finally wake up and say, “enough.” That the majority of Americans will remember we fought a revolution to escape a king, and we fought a civil war to end slavery. That we moved forward and gave women the right to vote, and gave the LGBTQ community the right to marry. Don’t give up on the people that did all that, and think they won’t rise up again, and tell the felon, racist, homophobe, misogynist, found liable for sexual assault, now in the White House, and his sycophants in congress, and his cult, that we will take back our country in the 2026 midterm elections. That we will vote in large numbers, and demand our freedom from the tyranny that he is foisting on our country. 

So yes, I will celebrate this Fourth of July not for what is happening in our country today, but rather for what our country actually stands for. Not for birthday parades, and abandonment of the heroes in Ukraine in support of dictators like Putin. But for the belief the decent people in our country will rise up and vote. That is what I will celebrate and pray for this Fourth of July. That is what I think the fireworks will mean this July Fourth. I refuse to accept defeat the same way our revolutionary soldiers wouldn’t, and the way our troops in the civil war wouldn’t till the confederacy was defeated. 

I will celebrate this Fourth of July because I refuse to accept we will not defeat those who would destroy our beautiful country, and what it really stands for. 

Peter Rosenstein is a longtime LGBTQ rights and Democratic Party activist.

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Is it time for DC to have new congressional representation?

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton will turn 89 in June

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Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

With WorldPride, Supreme Court decisions, military parades in our streets, mayor and City Council discussions about a new football stadium, it is entirely understandable if we missed the real local political story for our future in the halls of Congress. Starting this past May, the whispered longtime discussions about the city’s representation in Congress broke out. Stories in Mother Jones, Reddit, Politico, Axios, NBC News, the New York Times, and even the Washington Post have raised the question of time for a change after so many years.  A little background for those who may not be longtime residents is definitely necessary.

Since the passage of the 1973 District of Columbia Home Rule Act, we District residents have had only two people represent us in Congress, Walter Fauntroy and Eleanor Holmes Norton, who was first elected in 1990 after Mr. Fauntroy decided to run for mayor of our nation’s capital city. 

No one can deny Mrs. Norton’s love and devotion for the District. Without the right to vote for legislation except in committee, she has labored hard and often times very loud to protect us from congressional interference and has successfully passed District of Columbia statehood twice in the House of Representatives, only to see the efforts fail in the U.S. Senate where our representation is nonexistent. 

However, the question must be asked: Is it time for a new person to accept the challenges of working with fellow Democrats and even with Republicans who look for any opportunity to harm our city? Let us remember that the GOP House stripped away millions of OUR dollars from the D.C. budget, trashed needle exchange programs, attacked reproductive freedoms, interfered with our gun laws at a moment’s notice, and recently have even proposed returning the District to Maryland, which does not want us, or simply abolishing the mayor and City Council and returning to the old days of three commissioners or the very silly proposal to change the name of our Metro system to honor you know you.

Mrs. Norton will be 89 years old next year around the time of the June 2026 primary and advising us she is running for another two-year term. Besides her position there will be other major elected city positions to vote for, namely mayor, several City Council members and Board of Education, the district attorney and the ANC. Voting for a change must not be taken as an insult to her. It should be raised and praised as an immense thank you from our LGBTQ+ community to Mrs. Norton for her many years of service not only as our voice in Congress but must include her chairing the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, her time at the ACLU, teaching constitutional law at Georgetown University Law School, and her role in the 1963 March on Washington. 

Personally, I am hoping she will accept all the accolades which will come her way. Her service can continue by becoming the mentor/tutor to her replacement. It is time!

John Klenert is a longtime D.C. resident and member of the DC Vote and LGBTQ+ Victory Fund Campaign boards of directors.

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Supreme Court decision on opt outs for LGBTQ books in classrooms will likely accelerate censorship

Mahmoud v. Taylor ruling sets dangerous precedent

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U.S. Supreme Court (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

With its ruling Friday requiring public schools to allow parents to opt their children out of lessons with content they object to — in this case, picture books featuring LGBTQ+ characters or themes — the Supreme Court has opened up a new frontier for accelerating book-banning and censorship.

The legal case, Mahmoud v. Taylor, was brought by a group of elementary school parents in Montgomery County, Md., who objected to nine books with LGBTQ+ characters and themes. The books included stories about a girl whose uncle marries his partner, a child bullied because of his pink shoes, and a puppy that gets lost at a Pride parade. The parents, citing religious objections, sued the school district, arguing that they must be given the right to opt their children out of classroom lessons including such books. Though the district had originally offered this option, it reversed course when the policy proved unworkable.

In its opinion the court overruled the decisions of the lower courts and sided with the parents, ruling that books depicting a same-sex wedding as a happy occasion or treating a gay or transgender child as any other child were “designed to present … certain contrary values and beliefs as things to be rejected.” The court held that exposing children to lessons including these books was coercive, and undermined the parents’ religious beliefs in violation of the free exercise clause of the First Amendment.

This decision is the latest case in recent years to use religious freedom arguments to justify decisions that infringe on other fundamental rights. The court has used the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to permit companies to deny their employees insurance coverage for birth control, allow state-contracted Catholic adoption agencies to refuse to work with same-sex couples, and permit other businesses to discriminate against customers on the basis of their sexual orientation.

Here, the court used the Free Exercise Clause to erode bedrock principles of the Free Speech Clause at a moment when free expression is in peril. Since 2021, PEN America has documented 16,000 instances of book bans nationwide. In addition, its tracking shows 62 state laws restricting teaching and learning on subjects from race and racism to LGBTQ+ rights and gender — censorship not seen since the Red Scare of the 1950s.

Forcing school districts to provide “opt outs” will likely accelerate book challenges and provide book banners with another tool to chill speech. School districts looking to avoid logistical burdens and controversy will simply remove these books, enacting de facto book bans that deny children the right to read. The court’s ruling, carefully couched in the language of religious freedom, did not even consider countervailing and fundamental free speech rights. And it will make even more vulnerable one of the main targets of those who have campaigned for book bans: LGBTQ+ stories.

When understood in this wider context, it is clear that this case is about more than religious liberty — it is also about ideological orthodoxy. Many of the opt-out requests in Montgomery County were not religious in nature. When the reversal of the opt-out policy was first announced, many parents voiced concerns that any references to sexual orientation and gender identity were age-inappropriate.

The decision could allow parents to suppress all kinds of ideas they might find objectionable. In her dissent, Justice Sotomayor cites examples of objections parents could have to books depicting patriotism, interfaith marriage, immodest dress, or women’s rights generally, including the achievements of women working outside the home. If parents can demand a right to opt their children out of any topic to which they hold religious objections, what is to stop them from challenging books featuring gender equality, single mothers, or even a cheeseburger, which someone could theoretically oppose for not being kosher? This case throws the door open to such possibilities.

But the decision will have an immediate and negative impact on the millions of LGBTQ+ students and teachers, and students being raised in families with same-sex parents. This decision stigmatizes LGBTQ+ stories, children, and families, undermines free expression and the right to read, and impairs the mission of our schools to prepare children to live in a diverse and pluralistic society.

Literature is a powerful tool for building empathy and understanding for everyone, and for ensuring that the rising generation is adequately prepared to thrive in a pluralistic society. When children don’t see themselves in books they are left to feel ostracized. When other children see only people like them they lose out on the opportunity to understand the world we live in and the people around them.

Advocates should not give up but instead take a page from the authors who have written books they wished they could have read when they were young — by uplifting their stories. Despite this devastating decision, we cannot allow their voices to be silenced. Rather, we should commit to upholding the right to read diverse literature.

Elly Brinkley is a staff attorney with PEN America.

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