Local
Stein Club spurns Barry, Alexander in D.C. primary endorsement vote
Council members voted against same-sex marriage law
Members of the Stein Club cast votes on endorsements in several key races. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
The Gertrude Stein Democratic Club last week broke from its longstanding tradition of endorsing incumbent City Council members for re-election when it turned down endorsements for Council members Marion Barry (D-Ward 8) and Yvette Alexander (Ward 7).
Club members who spoke at a Feb. 23 endorsement meeting held at the Human Rights Campaign headquarters cited the two Council members’ December 2009 vote against the city’s same-sex marriage law as the reason the two should not be endorsed. The Council passed the same-sex marriage law by a vote of 11-2.
The club endorsed the two Council members in the 2008 Democratic primary and the November 2008 general election.
Barry and Alexander are running now in the city’s April 3 Democratic Primary, with political pundits saying Barry is the favorite to win his party’s nomination and the general election in November. Observers say the outcome of the Ward 7 race is uncertain.
Barry, who attended the meeting, told Stein Club members he has a long record of support on LGBT issues since 1978, when he won election as D.C. mayor, and throughout his tenure as mayor and Ward 8 Council member. He said the club should not judge him solely on his vote on the marriage issue.
Marion Barry addresses the Stein Club. (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
Some club members, including Ward 8 gay activist Phil Pannell, pointed to Barry’s decision to participate and speak at a 2009 rally at Freedom Plaza against the same-sex marriage bill that was organized by the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage.
Neither Alexander nor a representative of her campaign attended the meeting. In a club questionnaire she completed and turned in prior to the meeting, Alexander did not discuss her vote against the marriage bill but said, “I will not support efforts to undo marriage rights secured for D.C.’s LGBT community.”
Three of the four candidates running against Barry for the Ward 8 Council seat – Darrell Danny Gaston, Jacque Patterson, and S.S. Sandra Seegars – attended the meeting to compete for the club’s endorsement. But none of them were able to obtain a 60 percent majority vote required for a club endorsement, resulting in a Stein Club ‘no-endorsement’ for the Ward 8 race.
In the Ward 7 contest, community activist Tom Brown won the endorsement with a 62 percent vote on a second ballot. Brown did not return a club questionnaire, but Stein President Lateefah Williams said Brown expressed support for LGBT rights, including same-sex marriage, during his appearance at the Feb. 23 meeting.
“Our bylaws don’t require people to submit a questionnaire to get an endorsement,” Williams said.
She noted Barry also did not return the questionnaire.
Each of the other four candidates running against Alexander for the Council seat, in addition to Brown, attended the meeting and urged the club to back their candidacies, expressing general support for LGBT related issues. They included Kevin Chavous, Dorothy Douglas, Monica Johnson, and Rev. William Bennett II.
Bennett was among a few of the candidates seeking the club’s endorsement who acknowledged they would not have voted for the same-sex marriage bill if they were on the Council at the time it came up, citing religious grounds for their opposition.
On Feb. 16 the club endorsed the re-election bids of D.C. Congressional Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, Ward 4 Council member Muriel Bowser, and D.C. shadow representative candidate Nate Bennett-Fleming.
The Stein Club, the city’s largest LGBT political organizations, is scheduled to hold its final endorsement meeting for the upcoming primary on March 1 for the at-large and Ward 2 Council races. The meeting will be held at the Democratic National Committee headquarters on Capitol Hill.
District of Columbia
Mayor Bowser signs bill requiring insurers to cover PrEP
‘This is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS’
D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser on March 20 signed a bill approved by the D.C. Council that requires health insurance companies to cover the costs of HIV prevention or PrEP drugs for D.C. residents at risk for HIV infection.
Like all legislation approved by the Council and signed by the mayor, the bill, called the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act, was sent to Capitol Hill for a required 30-day congressional review period before it takes effect as D.C. law.
Gay D.C. Council member Zachary Parker (D-Ward 5) last year introduced the bill.
Insurance coverage for PrEP drugs has been provided through coverage standards included in the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. But AIDS advocacy organizations have called on states and D.C. to pass their own legislation requiring insurance coverage of PrEP as a safeguard in case federal policies are weakened or removed by the Trump administration, which has already reduced federal funding for HIV/AIDS-related programs.
Like legislation passed by other states, the PrEP D.C. Amendment Act requires insurers to cover all PrEP drugs approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Studies have shown that PrEP drugs, which can be taken as pills or by injection just twice a year, are highly effective in preventing HIV infection.
“I think this is a win for our community,” Parker said after the D.C. Council voted unanimously to approve the bill on its first vote on the measure in February. “And this is a win in the fight against HIV/AIDS.”
District of Columbia
Blade editor to be inducted into D.C. Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame
Kevin Naff marks 24 years with publication this year
Longtime Washington Blade Editor Kevin Naff will be inducted into D.C.’s Society of Professional Journalists Hall of Fame in June, the group announced this week.
Hall of Fame honorees are chosen by the Society of Professional Journalists’ Washington, D.C., Pro Chapter. Naff and two other inductees — Seth Borenstein, a Washington-based national science writer for the AP and Cheryl W. Thompson, an award-winning correspondent for National Public Radio — will be celebrated at the chapter’s Dateline Awards dinner on Tuesday, June 9, at the National Press Club. The dinner’s emcee will be Kojo Nnamdi, host of WAMU radio’s weekly “Politics Hour.”
“I am tremendously honored by this recognition,” Naff said. “I have spent a lifetime in the D.C. area learning from so many talented journalists and am humbled to be considered in their company. Thank you to SPJ and to all the LGBTQ pioneers who came before me who made this possible.”
Naff joined the Blade in 2002 after years in print and digital journalism. He worked as a financial reporter for Reuters in New York before moving to Baltimore in 1996 to launch the Baltimore Sun’s website. He spent four years at the Sun before leaving for an internet startup and later joining the mobile data group at Verizon Wireless working on the first generation of mobile apps.
He then moved to the Blade and has served as the publication’s longest-tenured editor. In 2023, Naff published his first book, “How We Won the War for LGBTQ Equality — And How Our Enemies Could Take It All Away.”
Previous Hall of Fame inductees include luminaries in journalism like Wolf Blitzer, Benjamin Bradlee, Bob Woodward, Andrea Mitchell, and Edgar Allen Poe. The Blade’s senior news reporter Lou Chibbaro Jr. was inducted in 2015.
Maryland
Supreme Court ruling against conversion therapy bans could affect Md. law
Then-Gov. Larry Hogan signed statute in 2018
By PAMELA WOOD, JOHN-JOHN WILLIAMS IV, and MADELEINE O’NEILL | The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled against a law banning “conversion therapy” for LGBTQ kids in Colorado, a ruling that also could apply to Maryland’s ban on the discredited practice.
An 8-1 high court majority sided with a Christian counselor who argues the law banning talk therapy violates the First Amendment. The justices agreed that the law raises free speech concerns and sent it back to a lower court to decide whether it meets a legal standard that few laws pass.
Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for the court’s majority, said the law “censors speech based on viewpoint.” The First Amendment, he wrote, “stands as a shield against any effort to enforce orthodoxy in thought or speech in this country.”
The rest of this article can be read on the Baltimore Banner’s website.
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