Local
LGBT activists saddened, angry over Kwame Brown resignation, criminal charge
Catania calls on mayor to ‘provide answers’ or resign
Eleanor Holmes Norton & openly gay City Council member David Catania speak with Kwame Brown. (Washington Blade file photo by Michael Key)
LGBT activists joined fellow D.C. residents in expressing sadness and anger over an ongoing city corruption investigation that led to the resignation Wednesday night of D.C. Council Chair Kwame Brown (D-At-Large).
Brown’s resignation came hours after federal prosecutors charged him with committing felony bank fraud. Sources familiar with the case said he was expected to plead guilty to the charge at a hearing scheduled for 11 a.m. Friday at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
An atmosphere of tension and uncertainty within the city government over Brown’s predicament intensified when gay D.C. Council member David Catania (I-At-Large) called on Mayor Vincent Gray to resign if he continues to refuse to publicly answer questions about a separate investigation into alleged wrong-doing in his 2010 election campaign.
In an interview with Fox 5 TV News, Catania said, “The time has come, especially in light of what we expect to happen with the chairman today, for the mayor to provide answers to the questions that people have regarding his campaign or return as a private citizen and address those issues.”
Catania appeared to express what many observers at the Wilson Building, which serves as D.C.’s City Hall, were saying privately.
“The Wilson Building has been transformed into a rumor mill and, you know, people simply speculate as to when the next shoe will drop,” he told Fox 5 News. “Enough is enough.”
Brown’s resignation came five months after D.C. Council member Harry Thomas (D-Ward 5) resigned less than a week before he was charged with embezzling $350,000 in city funds. Thomas pleaded guilty to the charge and was sentenced in May to 38 months in jail.
Last month, two high-level officials in Gray’s 2010 mayoral election campaign pleaded guilty to campaign finance violations. The violations involved illegally diverting campaign funds to pay a minor mayoral candidate to stay in the race and harass and heckle then Mayor Adrian Fenty, Gray’s main rival in the election.
Gray has said he knew nothing about the scheme, and no evidence has surfaced to indicate he engaged in an illegal act in connection with the payoff to candidate Sulaimon Brown. But sources familiar with the case say federal prosecutors continue to investigate whether Gray and others were involved in the scheme.
On Wednesday, prosecutors with the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia filed a charging document called a criminal information against Council Chair Brown accusing him of engaging in bank fraud.
The document says that between August 2005 and August 2007 Brown “knowingly and willfully devised a scheme and artifice to defraud Industrial Bank, N.A.” It says the alleged scheme involved obtaining a home equity loan from the bank to buy a boat by falsifying loan application documents that overstated his income by “tens of thousands of dollars.”
Sources familiar with the case said Brown consented to the criminal information and waived his right to have the allegation brought before a grand jury. Defendants who select the criminal information option almost always agree to an offer by the government to plead guilty in exchange for a less severe charge or a promise by the government to seek a more lenient sentence, according to court observers.
“I hereby resign my position as Chairman of the Council of the District of Columbia effective immediately,” Brown said in a letter he submitted to the Council’s secretary at 4:29 p.m. Wednesday.
“I have made some very serious mistakes in judgment for which I will take full responsibility,” he said in the letter. “I have behaved in ways that I should not have. I was wrong, and I will face the consequences of that conduct,” he said.
“This is a grim day,” said Rick Rosendall, vice president for political affairs of the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance. “Kwame Brown was an ally of the LGBT community, if not in the top rank.”
Rosendall noted that Brown wasn’t an early supporter of same-sex marriage and he didn’t support a bill to allow gay clubs displaced by the Washington Nationals baseball stadium to move to new locations. But Rosendall said Brown “redeemed himself in recent years, including by co-introducing the marriage equality bill.”
Gay Democratic and Ward 8 activist Phil Pannell called Brown’s resignation “heart breaking,” saying he worked on all of Brown’s election campaigns. When Brown ran for the Council Chair position Pannell arranged for him to visit gay bars across the city, helping Brown build support from LGBT voters.
Pannell and Lateefah Williams, president of the Gertrude Stein Democratic Club, the city’s largest LGBT political group, said Brown’s departure from the Council would not change the Council’s overall strong support for LGBT related issues.
“My immediate reaction is this won’t have an impact on our community,” Williams said in referring to LGBT support on the Council.
“It is always sad when someone people trust and respect does something to betray that,” said gay Democratic activist Peter Rosenstein. “Kwame Brown will have to pay the consequences but the District is doing well and we need to focus on that and esure that whatever the result of his transgressions are they don’t impact the greater good of the people.”
Council members Phil Mendelson and Vincent Orange, both At-Large Democrats, are believed to be the two candidates in contention for the post of interim chair. Under the city’s Home Rule Charter, the Council has authority to elect an interim chair if the Council chair position becomes vacant. Under the charter, the Council’s four at-large members are the only ones eligible for the interim chair position.
The interim chair serves until a new permanent chair is chosen in a special city election. Sources familiar with the Council have said Mendelson appears to be the favorite for the interim post.
Under the Home Rule Charter, Council member Mary Cheh, who holds the position of president pro tempore of the Council, became the Council’s acting chair until the Council elects the interim chair. Cheh said she has called a special Council meeting for June 13 for the purpose of allowing the Council to elect the interim chair.
Cheh is a strong support of LGBT rights.
Like other political activists, gay Democratic activist Brad Lewis, a former Stein Club president and resident of Ward 8, said he was angered as well as saddened over the Kwame Brown resignation.
“In a short period of time we have had two elected officials resign after being charged with a felony,” Lewis said. “This doesn’t look good for us as a city. It doesn’t help us in our effort to expand home rule and obtain budget autonomy,” he said in referring to longstanding efforts by the city to end Congress’s power to give final approval to the city’s budget.
Pointing to ongoing investigations of other Council members and the mayor, Lewis added, “It seems like half of our officials are under investigation. It all stems from greed and ego. People feel they are above the law.”
D.C. gay Republican leaders Bob Kabel and Robert Turner echoed Lewis’s sentiment. Kabel is chair of the D.C. Republican Party. Turner is president of the D.C. Log Cabin Republicans, a gay political group.
“Our city deserves better than this,” Kabel said in a statement. “The charges against Kwame Brown are serious and are a result of elected officials feeling entitled to benefits they don’t deserve.”
Kabel added, “Until District residents begin electing Republican officials, our city will continue to endure similar embarrassments and unethical behavior from our elected officials.”
Turner said he was troubled that two members of the City Council have resigned over corruption scandals within a period of barely six months.
“Kwame Brown says he wants to take the honorable course by resigning,” Turner said. “The honorable course is not to commit fraud in the first place…Sadly, the question on everybody’s mind is ‘who’s next?’”
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.
District of Columbia
As mayor’s race takes shape, candidates endorse LGBTQ equality
Like nearly all recent D.C. elections, LGBTQ voters will be choosing a candidate for mayor in 2026 from a list of mostly strong LGBTQ rights supporters in the city’s June 16 primary.
As of March 30, the D.C. Board of Elections’ list of candidates who submitted the required number of petition signatures for the June 16 primary ballot included 10 mayoral candidates: nine Democrats and one Statehood Green Party candidate.
Among those candidates, six, all Democrats, have issued statements expressing strong support for LGBTQ rights, including the two leading Democratic contenders, former D.C. Council member Kenyan McDuffie and current Council member Janeese Lewis George, who represents Ward 4.
One of the lesser-known Democratic candidates who released an LGBTQ supportive statement, Rini Sampath, a cyber security consultant, told the Washington Blade she identifies as queer, becoming one of the first known LGBTQ D.C. mayoral candidates to gain access to a major party primary ballot.
“We’re living in an extremely diverse community, an extremely unique community,” she told the Blade. “And being able to self-label, self-identify as queer is something that I just want to take pride in.”
Similar to McDuffie and Lewis George, Sampath released statements to the Blade and the Capital Stonewall Democrats, the city’s largest LGBTQ local political group, expressing support for LGBTQ rights and outlining plans for LGBTQ supportive policies if elected mayor.
Although many D.C. LGBTQ activists have said they have yet to decide whom to support for mayor, those who have decided appear to be divided between McDuffie and Lewis George. Most D.C. political observers consider McDuffie and Lewis George to be the two leading candidates in the mayoral race.
The other Democratic mayoral contenders who have released statements expressing support on LGBTQ issues include Gary Goodweather, a local real estate manager and developer who has been actively campaigning at LGBTQ events; Vincent Orange, a former At-Large and Ward 5 D.C. Council member; and Kathy Henderson, a longtime Ward 5 community activist and elected Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner.
The remaining two Democratic mayoral candidates, Hope Solomon, a former U.S. Department of Homeland Security contractor and Dupont Circle civic activist; and Ernest Johnson, a real estate broker and Ward 1 community activist, did not respond to inquiries from the Blade and Capital Stonewall Democrats seeking information about their position on LGBTQ related issues.
Robert Gross, the Statehood Green Party candidate who is running unopposed in the June 16 primary, also didn’t respond to inquires from the Blade about his position on LGBTQ issues.
D.C. Board of Elections records show that at least five Republican candidates filed papers to run for mayor in the June 16 GOP primary, but none of them remained as candidates as of March 30, when the election board issued its updated candidate list.
Just one of the five Republican candidates replied to an email message from the Washington Blade sent to all mayoral candidates in early March seeking their position on LGBTQ issues. That candidate, Esa Muhammad, whose website identifies him as an engineer, consultant, and local business owner, sent a reply expressing opposition to LGBTQ rights.
“Unfortunately, I do not support LGBTQ because The God only created 2 genders (Adam/Eve),” he wrote. “Anyway, I will be fair to you all despite your sick way of looking at life,” he stated.
Capital Stonewall Democrats President Stevie McCarty said his group sent questionnaires to all the Democratic mayoral candidates as well as to Democrats running for other offices such as D.C. Council. Information posted on the group’s website shows only four of the mayoral candidates returned a complete questionnaire: McDuffie, Lewis George, Goodweather, and Sampath.
Each of them provides detailed information of their plans for supporting LGBTQ policies if elected and their record of support on LGBTQ issues. McCarty said the questionnaire responses for all candidates that submitted them can be accessed at outvotedc.org.
He said Capital Stonewall Democrats will hold virtual LGBTQ forums in April, including a mayoral forum on April 8. He said the group’s members will vote on the candidate endorsements online from April 20 through May 11, and the group expects to announce its endorsements May 14.
GLAA DC, formerly known as the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance of Washington, has issued candidate ratings for most D.C. elections since the 1970s, and the nonpartisan LGBTQ group was expected to issue ratings for mayoral candidates this year. But like in recent years, the group is expected to base its ratings on mostly non-LGBTQ issues, with a progressive, left-leaning perspective, according to a nine-page “Back to Basics GLAA Policy Brief 2026” that the group released in March.
The LGBTQ activists who are backing McDuffie or Lewis George appear to be gravitating to the two based on their political leanings separate from LGBTQ issues, just like voters in general. Lewis George, who identifies as a democratic socialist, is popular among LGBTQ and non-LGBTQ “progressives.”
McDuffie, who is seen as a more moderate candidate along the lines of current D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, is being supported by LGBTQ activists who hold those views, some of whom currently work in the Bowser administration.
Among Lewis George’s LGBTQ supporters are longtime Ward 8 community leader Philip Pannell and former Capital Stonewall Democrats president Howard Garrett. Among the LGBTQ McDuffie backers are longtime D.C. Democratic activists John Fanning and David Meadows.
Longtime D.C. LGBTQ Democratic Party activist Peter Rosenstein, who is supporting McDuffie, has raised concerns about Lewis George’s backing by the national group Democratic Socialists of America. In Facebook postings, Rosenstein points to the Democratic Socialists of America’s opposition to Israel as a country and said it is viewed by many in the Jewish community as promoting antisemitism. He has criticized Lewis George for not speaking out against that and for accepting the DSA’s endorsement.
In an interview with the Blade, Lewis George strongly disputed that assessment, saying she has been a strong ally and supporter of the Jewish community.
“I’m a member of the Metro DSA here in D.C. that I work with to fight for labor and for tenant rights,” she said. “I’m also a member of the Democratic Party,” she added, saying, “There are things that the Democratic Party does that I don’t agree with. There are things that the national DSA does that I don’t agree with. That’s a group that I work with.”
“But I want to be clear that I am running for mayor to represent all of our community, and that includes our amazing and historical Jewish community here in D.C.,” she said. “I have had the amazing opportunity to spend time at synagogues and talking to Jewish leaders and groups and institutions. And so, there should be no worry here.”
Following are short excerpts from the detailed statements five of the nine Democratic mayoral candidates submitted to the Capital Stonewall Democrats or the Washington Blade.
Kenyan McDuffie: “As mayor, every piece of legislation I sign, craft, or endorse should also encompass the interest and input of the LGBTQ community members and advocates…From housing to health care and everything in between… We have a dire crisis regarding the rise in homelessness especially among the youth in our LGBTQ communities. In my administration that simply cannot be the status quo and will not be…I have been a consistent champion for our LGBTQ community and will remain so as Mayor of D.C.’
Janeese Lewis George: “As mayor, I will protect our LGBTQ+ neighbors against federal attacks on their identity, including their health care…On the Council I have been a strong supporter of pro-LGBTQ+ bills, including making D.C. a sanctuary for people seeking gender-affirming health care as well as addressing discrimination and harassment in nightlife and hospitality…And as mayor, I am prepared to move up and win those fights – a fight for D.C. statehood, a fight for our true economy, and a real opportunity to uplift our Black queer and trans youth.”
Gary Goodweather: “A Goodweather administration will defend every D.C. law protecting LGBTQ residents. I will establish a Defend DC office to coordinate the District’s legal and public response to federal overreach, with LGBTQ+ protections explicitly within its mandate…My affordable D.C. plan will produce 50,000 new homes with 36,000 affordable units, and I will ensure LGBTQ+ youth housing programs are funded as a budget priority.”
Rini Sampath: “I am an immigrant, proud queer woman, and a 10-year resident of Washington, D.C…For me, LGBTQ+ voters including transgender and nonbinary residents, are not a separate or symbolic constituency; they are a core part of a broader, multiracial, cross-ward coalition rooted in in equity and opportunity.”
Vincent Orange: “I have a long and consistent record of supporting LGBTQ+ equality and inclusion in the District of Columbia, grounded in both policy and personal commitment. As the District’s Democratic Committeeman from 2006 to 2015, I publicly supported marriage equality and voted accordingly … During my time on the D.C. Council, I worked to advance protections for LGBTQ+ residents, including authoring and passing legislation to prohibit discrimination against transgender individuals in the workplace.”
Kathy Henderson: Kathy Henderson has maintained a consistent record of treating all members of the community with dignity, compassion, and respect, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, identity, political party, national origin, or ideology. Kathy Henderson embraced the late Wanda Alston as a colleague and good friend…Alston was the first director of the Mayor’s Office of LGBTQ Affairs and Henderson helped to organize and facilitate the first LGBTQ citizens summit.”
Local
D.C.’s affirming congregations to mark Holy Week, Easter
Dignity Washington among groups holding events
LGBTQ-friendly congregations in the D.C. area this week are marking Easter and Holy Week.
The Metropolitan Community Church of Washington, D.C., located in Mount Vernon Square, holds both online and in-person services.
An online-only Good Friday service will take place on April 3 at 7 p.m. In person or online Resurrection Sunday services will take place on April 5 at 10:30 a.m.
Dignity Washington, an LGBTQ Catholic group, is also holding Holy Week and Easter events.
The group on March 29 held a Palm Sunday prayer event. Dignity Washington on April 5 will hold a Mass at St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church at 6 p.m. It will be livestreamed on Facebook.
Foundry United Methodist Church holds two Easter Sunday services at 9 and 11:15 a.m.
Riverside Baptist Church, located in Southwest Washington, is an “Inclusive, Multicultural, Christ-Centered” congregation that also offers Holy Week and Easter activities.
The church on Good Friday at 3 p.m. is holding an outreach period in which they will clean up the neighborhood. Easter Sunday services will be held at 9:45 a.m., starting with a musical prelude, followed by services.
The church offers weekly “Wednesday Witness,” a youth and safety zone drop-in, serving as a safe space for the students of Jefferson Middle School and the community. It takes place from 3-5 p.m.
The DC LGBTQ+ Community Center offers a comprehensive list of inclusive faith communities on its website. The Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists offers a list of churches partnered with their organization that are inclusive and mainly Baptist, but the group does feature churches of other denominations.
The 18th National Rainbow Seder took place at the Human Rights Campaign on March 29. The sold out event is the country’s largest Passover Seder for the Jewish LGBTQ community.
Organizations behind the event included Bet Mishpachah, a local D.C. LGBTQ synagogue that Rabbi Jake Singer-Beilin leads, and GLOE, an Edlavitch DC Jewish Community Center program that sponsors events for the queer Jewish community. The theme for this year’s Seder was “Liberation for All Who Journey: Remembering, Resisting, Rebuilding.” Rabbis Atara Cohen, Koach Frazier, and Avigayil Halpern led it.
The Seder honored the late GLOE co-chair Michael Singer. Singer also served on the Edlavitch DC Jewish Community Center’s board.
“This Seder is both a celebration of how far we have come and a call to continue building a more just and inclusive world.” Bet Mishpachah Executive Director Joshua Maxey told the Washington Blade.
Kristi Noem ‘devastated’ as husband’s alleged fetish spending surfaces
Colo. activists condemn SCOTUS conversion therapy ruling
Is Ghana’s selective justice a human rights contradiction?
Supreme Court ruling against conversion therapy bans could affect Md. law
Glisten report details hostile climate for LGBTQ students
‘Out for McDuffie’ event held at D.C. gay bar
The Oscar-losing performance that’s too good to miss
‘Jonah’ an undeniably compelling but unusual memory play
PHOTOS: ‘No Kings’ rally and march
