Local
EXCLUSIVE: D.C. Office of Human Rights to launch anti-transgender discrimination campaign
Initiative is the country’s first government-funded effort of this kind.
Photo courtesy of the D.C. Office of Human Rights
The D.C. Office of Human Rights has created the country’s first government-funded campaign to combat anti-transgender discrimination, the Washington Blade has learned.
Two trans women and men and a self-identified “genderqueer” person will each appear in one of the five separate ads that the agency will place throughout the city in the fall. The spots will highlight respect, shared values and D.C.’s anti-discrimination law, which includes trans-specific protections. The ads will also encourage trans Washingtonians to contact OHR if they experience discrimination based on gender identity and expression.
“LGBT organizations are telling us this is the first government-sponsored campaign in the nation to focus solely on transgender and gender non-conforming people, and the Office of Human Rights is incredibly proud of that,” OHR Director Gustavo Velasquez told the Blade in a statement. “To ensure we take full-advantage of the opportunity, we identified three primary goals for the campaign: increase understanding of transgender and gender non-conforming people, reduce discriminatory incidents in the District and increase the number of community members who report discrimination. The courageous and bright D.C.-based participants appearing in the ads and the powerful accompanying messages can make this happen, although we know much more work needs to be done to eradicate discrimination towards this community.”
Two clients from Casa Ruby, a local Latino LGBT community center, are among the five D.C. residents who will appear in the ads. The D.C.-based Transgender Health Empowerment; the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force; the Movement Advancement Project; Jeffrey Richardson, director of Mayor’s Office of GLBT Affairs and others worked with the OHR to develop the campaign.
“I’m very happy that they are actually doing some preventive education things,” trans activist Ruby Corado told the Blade. “This city really needs a lot of understanding and the city really needs a lot of education, so having something like this … is really exciting.”
The OHR will officially unveil the campaign more than a year after D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray announced an employment program for the city’s trans residents. The D.C. Trans Coalition and THE are among the groups that continue to work with the Metropolitan Police Department, the Department of Corrections and other agencies to reduce the number of anti-trans hate crimes in the city and improve the treatment of trans D.C. Jail inmates.
“Our city is a pioneer in lots of things,” said Corado. “Having the Office of Human Rights take some leadership on this for me is remarkable. I’m proud and I’m very happy that this city and [it’s] LGBT leaders has taken on this issue and supported us 100 percent.”
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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