Local
Romney favored in D.C. GOP primary
Openly gay Chair of D.C. Republican Party challenged for position as Republican National Committeeman from D.C.
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney (Blade file photo by Michael Key)
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is considered the favorite to win 16 delegates in D.C.’s winner-take-all Republican presidential primary on April 3.
Romney is competing in the D.C. primary against GOP presidential contenders Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul and former GOP presidential candidate Jon Huntsman, whose name has remained on the D.C. ballot even though he dropped out of the race months ago.
GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum did not file papers to run in the D.C. primary.
In a little-noticed development, lesbian Republican activist Rachel Hoff is among the 16 delegate candidates included in Romney’s D.C. delegate slate that are expected to go to the Republican National Convention in August if Romney wins the D.C. primary.
At least two D.C. gay Republicans – Jose Cunningham and David Trebing – are slated as Romney alternate delegate candidates.
R. Clarke Cooper, president of the national gay GOP group Log Cabin Republicans, is slated as an alternate delegate candidate for Huntsman.
Under rules established by the D.C. Republican Party, all presidential candidates running in the primary must name 16 delegate candidates and another 16 alternate delegate candidates on a slate linked to their names in order to be placed on the ballot in the April 3 primary.
D.C. gay GOP activist Marc Morgan is slated as a delegate candidate committed to Gingrich. Local gay Republican activist Timothy Day, who is running in a special election in May for the city’s vacant Ward 5 City Council seat, is slated as a Gingrich alternate delegate.
President Barack Obama is running unopposed on the D.C. primary ballot as a Democrat.
In a separate Republican contest, Robert Kabel, the gay chair of the D.C. Republican Party, is running in the April 3 primary as a candidate for Republican National Committeeman from the district. Kabel, an attorney in private practice, is a former board chair of Log Cabin and is a supporter of same-sex marriage.
He is being challenged by conservative Republican activist Jordan Gehrke, who worked on the campaign of former presidential candidate Herman Cain and raised money for the 2006 Republican opponent of gay U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.).
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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