National
In reversal, same-sex marriage advocates playing offense
After years of fighting anti-gay forces, has the tide turned?

The issue of same-sex marriage has returned to the national stage in an unprecedented way as numerous states throughout the country are seeing action on the issue.
In the past week, several states have seen developments on marriage. Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire signed into law marriage legislation, while New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie vetoed a similar bill that reached his desk. The Maryland House voted to approve marriage legislation by a vote of 72-67, clearing what is seen as the most difficult hurdle in getting the legislation to Gov. Martin O’Malley’s desk.
A surprise development in Hawaii was also announced on Wednesday. According to Hawaii News Now, Gov. Neil Abercrombie (D) announced he would no longer defend in court a state constitutional amendment prohibiting same-sex marriage against federal legislation, while Health Director Loretta Fuddy said she’d continue defending the amendment.
These actions come on the heels of a three-judge panel of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling against the constitutionality of Proposition 8, California’s ban on same-sex marriage. Anti-gay forces this week appealed the ruling to the full appellate court.
The issue is also at the ballot. Advocates in Minnesota and North Carolina are working to beat back anti-gay marriage amendments, while advocates in Maine are preparing to push the first ever pro-marriage equality ballot in their state.
Meanwhile, anti-gay forces continue threatening to take away marriage rights in New Hampshire through repeal legislation.
M.V. Lee Badgett, a lesbian professor of economics and director of the Center for Public Policy & Administration at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, said she’s struck by “the tipping of the balance toward the proactive and positive side” of the debate on same-sex marriage.
In previous years, the issue of same-sex marriage has predominately seen activity in terms of anti-gay marriage ballot initiatives that — with the exception of Arizona in 2006 — have all been approved by voters, but that situation has changed.
“In four states, the marriage equality forces are on the offensive, with one new victory and others in sight,” Badgett said. “In a fifth, New Hampshire, the effort is more defensive to preserve an earlier win, and a sixth, Maine, is led by people determined to get back the right granted by the legislature but taken away by voters.”
Badgett, also research director at the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, noted only two states, North Carolina and Minnesota, have situations “like the ‘old’ model” of efforts to institute a ban on same-sex marriage in state constitutions.
“That political progress is very likely to reflect a growing cultural acknowledgement that same-sex couples can have the same kind of loving, committed relationships as different-sex couples, so they should also have the same right to marry,” Badgett said.
The issue is already playing out in the 2012 presidential election as the candidates vying for the nomination have adopted positions against marriage equality as part of their campaigns.
Just after the marriage legislation was signed in Washington, former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum made a campaign appearance in the state, saying Gregoire’s signature isn’t the “final word” and urging opponents of same-sex marriage to take action. Anti-gay forces have the opportunity to bring the measure to the ballot if they collect 120,577 petition signatures and deliver them to state officials before the June 6 deadline.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney has taken an interest in the marriage issue as well. Prior to the New Hampshire primary, he said he supports the repeal of the same-sex marriage law in the state. Both Romney and Santorum have also decried the Ninth Circuit panel’s ruling against Proposition 8 in California.
But what about President Obama? Sixteen months after first saying he could “evolve” on the issue, the president has yet to publicly endorse same-sex marriage, despite other work his administration has done on behalf of same-sex couples, including calling for repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act and declaring the anti-gay law unconstitutional.
Last week, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said on Air Force One that he wouldn’t weigh in on individual states’ actions on marriage and reiterated comments he previously made on the issue, saying Obama believes states should decide the issue and the president opposes taking away already established rights from couples.
“I would say only broadly, as I have said in the past, without weighing into individual states and their actions, that this president strongly supports the notion that the states should be able to decide this issue, and he opposes actions that take away rights that have been established by those states,” Carney said.
Pressed on whether Obama is still evolving on same-sex marriage, Carney said has “no update” on Obama’s views on the matter.
Richard Socarides, a New York-based LGBT advocate and former president of Equality Matters, said Obama should endorse same-sex marriage before Election Day.
“I do still believe it’s a good idea politically and I do still believe that he will cross that path and end up announcing his official support for it, but beyond that I don’t have any serious predictions,” Socarides said.
Socarides said an endorsement from Obama would energize progressive Democrats in an election year and “remind them that he’s a president who stands strongly” with the LGBT community as well as increase the support among the majority of Americans who support same-sex marriage.
Additionally, Socarides said anyone who wouldn’t support Obaman because he endorsed same-sex marriage wouldn’t support the president anyway in an election.
“He kind of has the worst of both worlds now because no one thinks he doesn’t support same-sex marriage, and the people who want him to be more vocal in this regard aren’t satisfied,” Socarides said.
LGBT advocates are also seeking help from the Democratic National Committee on the issue of same-sex marriage on two fronts: an endorsement of same-sex marriage in the Democratic Party platform, which will be issued in the fall, and financial resources to assist pro-LGBT advocates with ballot measures in the various states.
Last week, Freedom to Marry launched a campaign to encourage members of the Democratic Party platform drafting committee to adopt an endorsement of same-sex marriage in the document as well as support for measures overturning DOMA and opposition to anti-gay marriage amendments. As of Wednesday, the organization’s petition had 15,528 signatures.
The proposed platform language has already seen endorsements from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), co-chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus Reps. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) and Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), and, just this week, Emily Tisch Sussman, executive director of the Young Democrats of America.
During a news conference last week, Pelosi expounded upon her endorsement of adding marriage equality to the Democratic Party platform.
“What I, as one person, say that I support, is not necessarily what the consensus document of the platform is, so I was just talking about me when I said that,” Pelosi said. “In fact, in my platform in 1982, it was a midterm platform for our convention in California. We respected the definition of ‘family’ that worked for people, where they found their support, their loving system, and their opportunity to raise a family or to be a family.”
As for contributing money to the fight for same-sex marriage at the ballot, the DNC has made no announcement about financial contributions to pro-LGBT forces in states where it’ll be an issue. According to The Advocate, Jeremy Kennedy, campaign manager for the Coalition to Protect All North Carolina Families, had a meeting with DNC officials to ask for help in defeating the anti-gay marriage amendment in North Carolina, but hasn’t heard a response.
The DNC didn’t respond on short notice to the Blade’s request for comment. During an LGBT fundraiser in D.C. in October, DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz told the Washington Blade she’d “certainly consider” spending money to combat anti-gay constitutional amendments.
In a separate interview in January, Wasserman Schultz deferred to the platform committee on whether same-sex marriage will be included in the Democratic Party platform, although she said she’s supports marriage equality.
Federal Government
Treasury Department has a gay secretary but LGBTQ staff are under siege
Agency reverses course on LGBTQ inclusion under out Secretary Scott Bessent

A former Treasury Department employee who led the agency’s LGBTQ employee resource group says the removal of sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) from its discrimination complaint forms was merely a formalization of existing policy shifts that had already taken hold following the second inauguration of President Donald Trump and his appointment of Scott Bessent — who is gay — to lead the agency.
Christen Boas Hayes, who served on the policy team at Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) from 2020 until March of this year, told the Washington Blade during a phone interview last week that the agency had already stopped processing internal Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) complaints on the basis of anti-LGBTQ discrimination.
“So the way that the forms are changing is a procedural recognition of something that’s already happening,” said Hayes. “Internally, from speaking to two EEO staff members, the changes are already taking place from an EEO perspective on what kind of cases will be found to have the basis for a complaint.”
The move, they said, comes amid the deterioration of support structures for LGBTQ workers at the agency since the administration’s early rollout of anti-LGBTQ executive orders, which led to “a trickle down effect of how each agency implements those and on what timeline,” decisions “typically made by the assistant secretary of management’s office and then implemented by the appropriate offices.”
At the end of June, a group of U.S. House Democrats including several out LGBTQ members raised alarms after a Federal Register notice disclosed Treasury’s plans to revise its complaint procedures. Through the agency’s Office of Civil Rights and EEO, the agency would eliminate SOGI as protected categories on the forms used by employees to initiate claims of workplace discrimination.
But Hayes’s account reveals that the paperwork change followed months of internal practice, pursuant to a wave of layoffs targeting DEI personnel and a chilling effect on LGBTQ organizing, including through ERGs.
Hayes joined Treasury’s FinCEN in 2020 as the agency transitioned into the Biden-Harris administration, working primarily on cryptocurrency regulation and emerging technologies until they accepted a “deferred resignation” offer, which was extended to civil servants this year amid drastic staffing cuts.
“It was two things,” Hayes said. “One was the fact that the policy work that I was very excited about doing was going to change in nature significantly. The second part was that the environment for LGBTQ staff members was increasingly negative after the release of the executive orders,” especially for trans and nonbinary or gender diverse employees.
“At the same time,” Hayes added, “having been on the job for four years, I also knew this year was the year that I would leave Treasury. I was a good candidate for [deferred resignation], because I was already planning on leaving, but the pressures that emerged following the change in administration really pushed me to accelerate that timeline.”
Some ERGs die by formal edict, others by a thousand cuts
Hayes became involved with the Treasury LGBTQ ERG shortly after joining the agency in 2020, when they reached out to the group’s then-president — “who also recently took the deferred resignation.”
“She said that because of the pressure that ERGs had faced under the first Trump administration, the group was rebuilding, and I became the president of the group pretty quickly,” Hayes said. “Those pressures have increased in the second Trump administration.”
One of the previous ERG board members had left the agency after encountering what Hayes described as “explicitly transphobic” treatment from supervisors during his gender transition. “His supervisors denied him a promotion,” and, “importantly, he did not have faith in the EEO complaint process” to see the issues with discrimination resolved, Hayes said. “And so he decided to just leave, which was, of course, such a loss for Treasury and our Employee Resource Group and all of our employees at Treasury.”
The umbrella LGBTQ ERG that Hayes led included hundreds of members across the agency, they said, and was complemented by smaller ERGs at sub-agencies like the IRS and FinCEN — several of which, Hayes said, were explicitly told to cease operations under the new administration.
Hayes did not receive any formal directive to shutter Treasury’s ERG, but described an “implicit” messaging campaign meant to shut down the group’s activities without issuing anything in writing.
“The suggestion was to stop emailing about anything related to the employee resource group, to have meetings outside of work hours, to meet off of Treasury’s campus, and things like that,” they said. “So obviously that contributes to essentially not existing functionally. Because whereas we could have previously emailed our members comfortably to announce a happy hour or a training or something like that, now they have to text each other personally to gather, which essentially makes it a defunct group.”
Internal directories scrubbed, gender-neutral restrooms removed
Hayes said the dismantling of DEI staff began almost immediately after the executive orders. Employees whose position descriptions included the terms “diversity, equity, and inclusion” were “on the chopping block,” they said. “That may differ from more statutorily mandated positions in the OMWI office or the EEO office.”
With those staff gone, so went the infrastructure that enabled ERG programming and community-building. “The people that made our employee resource group events possible were DEI staff that were fired. And so, it created an immediate chilling effect on our employee resource group, and it also, of course, put fear into a lot of our members’ hearts over whether or not we would be able to continue gathering as a community or supporting employees in a more practical way going forward. And it was just, really — it was really sad.”
Hayes described efforts to erase the ERGs from internal communication channels and databases. “They also took our information off internal websites so nobody could find us as lawyers went through the agency’s internal systems to scrub DEI language and programs,” they said.
Within a week, Hayes said, the administration had removed gender-neutral restrooms from Main Treasury, removed third-gender markers from internal databases and forms, and made it more difficult for employees with nonbinary IDs to access government buildings.
“[They] made it challenging for people with X gender markers on identification documents to access Treasury or the White House by not recognizing their gender marker on the TWAVES and WAVES forms.”
LGBTQ staff lack support and work amid a climate of isolation
The changes have left many LGBTQ staff feeling vulnerable — not only because of diminished workplace inclusion, but due to concerns about job security amid the administration’s reductions in force (RIFs).
“Plenty of people are feeling very stressed, not only about retaining their jobs because of the layoffs and pending questions around RIFs, but then also wondering if they will be included in RIF lists because they’re being penalized somehow for being out at work,” Hayes said. “People wonder if their name will be given, not because they’re in a tranche of billets being laid off, but because of their gender identity or sexual orientation.”
In the absence of functional ERGs, Hayes said, LGBTQ employees have been cut off from even informal networks of support.
“Employees [are] feeling like it’s harder to find members of their own community because there’s no email anymore to ask when the next event is or to ask about navigating healthcare or other questions,” they said. “If there is no ERG to go to to ask for support for their specific issue, that contributes to isolation, which contributes to a worse work environment.”
Hayes said they had not interacted directly with Secretary Bessent, but they and others observed a shift from the previous administration. “It is stark to see that our first ‘out’ secretary did not host a Pride event this year,” they said. “For the last three years we’ve flown the rainbow Pride flag above Treasury during Pride. And it was such a celebration among staff and Secretary Yellen and the executive secretary’s office were super supportive.”
“Employees notice changes like that,” they added. “Things like the fact that the Secretary’s official bio says ‘spouse’ instead of ‘husband.’ It makes employees wonder if they too should be fearful of being their full selves at work.”
The Blade contacted the Treasury Department with a request for comment outlining Hayes’s allegations, including the removal of inclusive infrastructure, the discouragement of ERG activity, the pre-formalization of EEO policy changes, and the targeting of DEI personnel. As of publication, the agency has not responded.
U.S. Supreme Court
Supreme Court to consider bans on trans athletes in school sports
27 states have passed laws limiting participation in athletics programs

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to hear two cases involving transgender youth challenging bans prohibiting them from participating in school sports.
In Little v. Hecox, plaintiffs represented by the ACLU, Legal Voice, and the law firm Cooley are challenging Idaho’s 2020 ban, which requires sex testing to adjudicate questions of an athlete’s eligibility.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals described the process in a 2023 decision halting the policy’s enforcement pending an outcome in the litigation. The “sex dispute verification process, whereby any individual can ‘dispute’ the sex of any female student athlete in the state of Idaho,” the court wrote, would “require her to undergo intrusive medical procedures to verify her sex, including gynecological exams.”
In West Virginia v. B.P.J., Lambda Legal, the ACLU, the ACLU of West Virginia, and Cooley are representing a trans middle school student challenging the Mountain State’s 2021 ban on trans athletes.
The plaintiff was participating in cross country when the law was passed, taking puberty blockers that would have significantly reduced the chances that she could have a physiological advantage over cisgender peers.
“Like any other educational program, school athletic programs should be accessible for everyone regardless of their sex or transgender status,” said Joshua Block, senior counsel for the ACLU’s LGBTQ and HIV Project. “Trans kids play sports for the same reasons their peers do — to learn perseverance, dedication, teamwork, and to simply have fun with their friends,” Block said.
He added, “Categorically excluding kids from school sports just because they are transgender will only make our schools less safe and more hurtful places for all youth. We believe the lower courts were right to block these discriminatory laws, and we will continue to defend the freedom of all kids to play.”
“Our client just wants to play sports with her friends and peers,” said Lambda Legal Senior Counsel Tara Borelli. “Everyone understands the value of participating in team athletics, for fitness, leadership, socialization, and myriad other benefits.”
Borelli continued, “The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit last April issued a thoughtful and thorough ruling allowing B.P.J. to continue participating in track events. That well-reasoned decision should stand the test of time, and we stand ready to defend it.”
Shortly after taking control of both legislative chambers, Republican members of Congress tried — unsuccessfully — to pass a national ban like those now enforced in 27 states since 2020.
Federal Government
UPenn erases Lia Thomas’s records as part of settlement with White House
University agreed to ban trans women from women’s sports teams

In a settlement with the Trump-Vance administration announced on Tuesday, the University of Pennsylvania will ban transgender athletes from competing and erase swimming records set by transgender former student Lia Thomas.
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights found the university in violation of Title IX, the federal rights law barring sex based discrimination in educational institutions, by “permitting males to compete in women’s intercollegiate athletics and to occupy women-only intimate facilities.”
The statement issued by University of Pennsylvania President J. Larry Jameson highlighted how the law’s interpretation was changed substantially under President Donald Trump’s second term.
“The Department of Education OCR investigated the participation of one transgender athlete on the women’s swimming team three years ago, during the 2021-2022 swim season,” he wrote. “At that time, Penn was in compliance with NCAA eligibility rules and Title IX as then interpreted.”
Jameson continued, “Penn has always followed — and continues to follow — Title IX and the applicable policy of the NCAA regarding transgender athletes. NCAA eligibility rules changed in February 2025 with Executive Orders 14168 and 14201 and Penn will continue to adhere to these new rules.”
Writing that “we acknowledge that some student-athletes were disadvantaged by these rules” in place while Thomas was allowed to compete, the university president added, “We recognize this and will apologize to those who experienced a competitive disadvantage or experienced anxiety because of the policies in effect at the time.”
“Today’s resolution agreement with UPenn is yet another example of the Trump effect in action,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement. “Thanks to the leadership of President Trump, UPenn has agreed both to apologize for its past Title IX violations and to ensure that women’s sports are protected at the university for future generations of female athletes.”
Under former President Joe Biden, the department’s Office of Civil Rights sought to protect against anti-LGBTQ discrimination in education, bringing investigations and enforcement actions in cases where school officials might, for example, require trans students to use restrooms and facilities consistent with their birth sex or fail to respond to peer harassment over their gender identity.
Much of the legal reasoning behind the Biden-Harris administration’s positions extended from the 2020 U.S. Supreme Court case Bostock v. Clayton County, which found that sex-based discrimination includes that which is based on sexual orientation or gender identity under Title VII rules covering employment practices.
The Trump-Vance administration last week put the state of California on notice that its trans athlete policies were, or once were, in violation of Title IX, which comes amid the ongoing battle with Maine over the same issue.
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