National
Pressure builds on Dems to include marriage in party platform
Obama campaign issues new statement; 27 House members call for pro-gay plank

The Obama campaign released a statement Thursday reiterating the president’s support for marriage equality, but falling just short of endorsing a call for its inclusion in the official party platform.
“The President’s personal views on marriage equality are known. The President and the Party are committed to crafting a platform that reflects the President’s positions and the values of the Party,” an Obama campaign spokesperson said Thursday in an email to the Washington Blade.

Rep. Adam Schiff (left) at a Pride Parade with the West Hollywood Mayor Jeffrey Prang and his partner (photo courtesy Schiff’s office)
In a follow-up email, the campaign spokesperson clarified that it’s not fair to characterize the remarks as an endorsement of including a same-sex marriage plank in the Democratic Party platform.
In an interview with ABC News in May, President Obama announced that he now supports same-sex marriage, saying he “just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.” But he hasn’t publicly endorsed the idea of including marriage equality in the platform despite support from many Democrats, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), U.S. Senate candidates Tammy Baldwin and Elizabeth Warren, four former Democratic National Committee chairs and 22 U.S. senators.
The 15 platform committee members were named last week and are set to hold a national hearing on the platform on the weekend of July 27 in Minneapolis, Minn. On Wednesday, the Washington Blade published statements from three voting members and two non-voting members of committee who said they’ll advocate for such language in the platform.
Earlier on Thursday, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) announced he’s leading a group of 27 House Democrats, including a majority of the California Democratic Congressional Delegation, seeking an endorsement of same-sex marriage in the platform.
In a Washington Blade interview prior to the statement from the campaign, Schiff said he wanted to see the Obama campaign join the call for such language and praised the president for his leadership on marriage equality.
“I think it certainly would be very helpful for the presidential campaign to be supportive and to acknowledge that this is something that ought to be part and parcel of what the Democratic Party stands for, but I think all of this really comes from the president’s leadership,” Schiff said. “It wouldn’t be happening without the president’s leadership, and I certainly haven’t sensed any resistance whatsoever – from the White House or elsewhere — to our efforts.”
Evan Wolfson, president of Freedom of Marry, is among those calling for a marriage equality plank in the platform, but said he thinks Obama “made his position clear” on the issue when he endorsed same-sex marriage in the ABC News interview.
“The president has made his position clear — he, like a majority of Americans, a substantial majority of independents, and an overwhelming majority of Democrats — supports the freedom to marry,” Wolfson said. “Freedom to Marry launched the call for a freedom to marry plank in the platform, continues to work hard to get it done, and is confident that we will succeed and the Democratic Party will be on record and on the right side of history.”
Schiff, one of the signers of the House Democrats’ friend-of-the-court briefs against the Defense of Marriage Act, said having the an endorsement of same-sex marriage in the platform is important because the Democratic Party has always “had a very strong commitment to equality and to the rights of all Americans.”
“This is consistent with the best traditions of the Democratic Party,” Schiff said. “I think it’s a pivotal time in the fight for marriage equality and the Democratic Party can play a leadership role, and here, the California Democratic delegation can play a leadership role in helping to marshal support from our colleagues and hopefully push the platform committee over the top.”
Schiff added that a marriage equality plank would be another step in “irresistible momentum” toward the legalization of same-sex marriage throughout the country and demonstrate the distinction between the Democratic and Republican parties on the issue.
Although he said he hasn’t spoken with platform committee members, Schiff said he’s “increasingly confident” that the marriage equality plank would end up in the platform based on conversations he’s had with Democratic Party officials, including Democratic National Committee Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
“I had a great meeting with Debbie Wasserman Schultz yesterday and she expressed her complete support as well as optimism and confidence that we can make this happen,” Schiff said.
That would be in line with what Wasserman Schultz told the Philadelphia Gay News in an interview published Thursday. The DNC chair has been telling media outlets she supports the language and expects to see it included in the platform.
“I expect marriage equality to be a plank in the national party platform,” Wasserman Schultz was quoted as saying. “President Obama has declared his support for it … Now, our platform committee process is a people-powered process. We have a platform committee and the platform is developed by our Democratic activists and the platform committee members, so they’ll go through a process. I hope that marriage equality, and expect that marriage equality, will be part of our platform.”
Joining Schiff in signing onto the letter are Reps. Lois Capps, Zoe Lofgren, Lucille Roybal-Allard, Lynn Woolsey, Mike Thompson, Anna Eshoo, Jackie Speier, Susan Davis, Janice Hahn, Judy Chu, Grace Napolitano, Howard Berman, George Miller, Linda Sanchez, Loretta Sanchez, Xavier Becerra, Henry Waxman, Sam Farr, Pete Stark, Mike Honda, Doris Matsui, Jerry McNerney, Brad Sherman, Karen Bass, Maxine Waters and Joe Baca. Pelosi as well as Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer have previously expressed support for the language.
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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