National
National news in brief: Jan. 13
Was death of Fla. drum major result of gay bashing? FBI includes men in definition of rape, N.C. official resigns over marriage vote, and more
Fla. drum major hazing death a gay bashing?
TALLAHASSEE — A member of the prestigious Florida A&M Marching 100 drum major may have been targeted for deadly hazing because he was gay, say several friends and LGBT organizations, according to a CNN blog.
Robert Champion was severely beaten on a team bus on the way back from a football game in November as part of a ritual hazing. On Monday, family attorney Chris Chestnut revealed that several friends and family members say Champion was gay, and some believe he may have been targeted for more severe treatment than other team members.
“The civil rights community can no longer stand on the sidelines while our sons and daughters continue to suffer in silence,” said National Black Justice Coalition executive director and CEO Sharon Lettman-Hicks in a statement calling for hate crime charges on Monday. “Mr. Champion is one of our own and his death will not be in vain.”
The family is suing the bus company that they allege ignored the attack that a medical examiner ruled a homicide.

Alan Cumming married his partner in New York on the fifth anniversary of their UK civil partnership. (photo by Christopher Macsurak via Wikimedia Commons)
FBI changes definition of ‘rape’ to include men
WASHINGTON — Until recently, the FBI only collected statistics on female victims of rape. With last week’s changes, however, the FBI will now begin including male victims of rape in those numbers.
Last week the FBI changed the definition of rape to ‘any forced penetration,’ to include male victims. This will help authorities better understand the impact of rape on victims, as well as allow the FBI to offer better resources to male victims of rape.
“If you can’t measure it accurately, you can’t monitor it, and you can’t direct appropriate resources to deal with the problem,” said Carol Tracy, executive director of the Women’s Law Project, according to USA Today.
N.C. official resigns over marriage ballot measure
FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. — The director of elections for suburban Harnett County, N.C. resigned this week in protest of a ballot measure that asks voters to ban legal recognition of same-sex couples in that state’s constitution.
In an interview with influential LGBT blogger Pam Spaulding, former director Sherre Toler, whose county sits adjacent to Fayetteville and Fort Bragg, said she resigned after the legislature forced the ballot measure, saying “I cannot and will not be a party to such actions.”
“Discrimination is discrimination in whatever form it takes,” Toler responded when asked whether or not her analogy of comparing the amendment to voting on interracial marriage was a fair comparison.
Toler expressed hope for the defeat of the amendment and called on other elections officials to follow her lead.
Mizrahi, Cumming each celebrate weddings
NEW YORK — Fashion designer Issac Mizrahi married Brad Goresky, his partner of six years, in New York recently.
“We didn’t want to get married until they said we could in New York,” the Project Runway star told an ecstatic Wendy Williams last week. “We were terrified, so we decided to elope in City Hall.”
Meanwhile, also in New York, Broadway star Alan Cumming married his partner Grant Shaffer on the fifth anniversary of their U.K. civil union, choosing the Soho Grand Hotel over City Hall.
“I just got married!!!!!” the star tweeted over the weekend. “On the 5th anniversary of our wedding in London Grant and I tied the knot again in NYC!!! #eatmericksantorum.”
Two icons of HIV/AIDS activism die
This week, the HIV/AIDS advocacy community lost two major players from the movement.
Unitarian Universalist minister Robert Franke, who in 2009 fought his eviction from a Little Rock retirement community after they discovered he was HIV positive, died Monday at 78. The retired university provost brought attention to issues faced by HIV-positive seniors, a growing demographic as advancements in treatments are made. With the help of Lambda Legal, Franke settled with the company late in 2010.
In addition, Chicago ACT-UP icon Frank Sieple passed away suddenly last week, according to veteran gay journalist Rex Wockner. He was 51.
“I was questioning authority when I was 14,” Sieple told Wockner in an Advocate interview in 1990. “I realized I needed to speak out in the streets if I wanted to see change in my lifetime.”
“We know there are drugs to prolong lives and the knowledge out there to find a cure.”
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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