National
Fired gay employee sues Library of Congress
Lawsuit says boss cited anti-gay biblical passages before terminating staffer
Peter TerVeer (Blade photo by Michael Key)
A gay man has charged in a lawsuit filed on Friday that he was fired in April from his job at the Library of Congress after being harassed and humiliated for more than a year by a supervisor who repeatedly quoted biblical passages condemning homosexuality.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, charges that management analyst Peter TerVeer, 30, suffered employment discrimination based on his gender, gender stereotyping and his religious beliefs in violation of Title VII of the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The lawsuit charges that his supervisor John Mech and library official Nicholas Christopher, Mech’s immediate supervisor, further violated Title VII by retaliating against TerVeer when he attempted to challenge their actions in an internal library complaint.
“Mech imposed his sex stereotypes and fundamentalist religious beliefs on homosexuality upon the plaintiff, resulting in a hostile working environment,” the lawsuit alleges.
In addition, the suit charges the library with violating TerVeer’s Fifth Amendment rights to due process and equal protection; violating an internal Library of Congress policy banning discrimination based on sexual orientation and religious beliefs; and violating the Library of Congress Act, a federal law that calls for the library to consider decisions related to employees “solely” on an employee’s “fitness” for his or her job duties.
Library of Congress spokesperson Gale Osterberg said the library has no immediate comment on the lawsuit. She said the library’s official response would come in the form of a legal brief filed in court that addresses each of the allegations made in the lawsuit. Under court rules, the Library of Congress has 60 days to file its response from the time TerVeer’s attorneys serve the library with an official copy of the lawsuit.
In April, when TerVeer and his attorney disclosed that TerVeer had filed a complaint against Mech and other officials with the library’s Equal Employment Opportunity office, which adjudicates employment discrimination cases, Osterberg said TerVeer’s case was a personnel matter and the library never comments on personnel matters pertaining to an individual employee.
She told the Blade at that time that under library rules, neither Mach, an accountant and lead auditor for the library’s Office of the Inspector General, where TerVeer worked, nor any other library employee familiar with TerVeer’s case, would be permitted to comment on the case.
When asked about a Library of Congress internal policy adopted in the 1990s that bans employment discrimination based on sexual orientation, Osterberg said only that, “We adhere to Title VII, period.”
She was referring to the provision in the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits employment discrimination based on race, religion, national origin, sex, and other criteria but not on sexual orientation.
Arthur Spitzer, legal director of the ACLU’s Washington, D.C. office, said TerVeer’s lawsuit’s claim that Mech and other Library of Congress officials violated Title VII by discriminating against TerVeer based on his sex and religious beliefs could make him eligible for relief under Title VII.
Spitzer noted that a U.S. District Court judge in D.C. ruled in 2008 that the Library of Congress illegally discriminated against a transgender woman on grounds of sex discrimination. Spitzer’s ACLU office represented the transgender woman, Diane Schroer, in the case along with the ACLU’s LGBT Rights Project.
The ACLU called the judge’s action “a groundbreaking decision that found that discriminating against someone for changing genders is sex discrimination under federal law.”
Spitzer said TerVeer’s case could potentially result in expanding the scope of Title VII, the federal civil rights statute, to cover gay people if the court issues a favorable decision on TerVeer’s lawsuit.
But Spitzer noted that unless the case is appealed by the library and an appeals court upholds the lower court decision, the favorable ruling would only apply to TerVeer.
Schroer was a retired and highly decorated Army colonel assigned to the Army Airborne Rangers before she applied for a Library of Congress job as a terrorism research analyst. The library hired her before reversing its decision and turning her down for the job when it learned she was transitioning from a man to a woman.
In its ruling against the library, the court ordered the library to pay Schroer nearly $500,000 in compensation for the discrimination it found the library to have committed. Schroer chose not to take the job there.
TerVeer is being represented for his lawsuit by attorneys Christopher Brown and Glen Ackerman of Ackerman Brown, PLLC; and Thomas Simeone of Simeone & Miller. (Ackerman Brown, PLLC also represents the Washington Blade in legal matters.)
The lawsuit says that when TerVeer began his job in February 2008 as a management auditor in the auditing division of the Library of Congress Office of the Inspector General, his work was well received and he soon received promotions.
The lawsuit says Mech and TerVeer had a cordial, professional relationship until Mach discovered TerVeer was gay in August 2009.
“Mech facilitated an introduction to his single daughter, Katie Mech, and the two became ‘friends’ on the social networking website Facebook in January 2009,” the lawsuit says.
It says that in August 2009 TerVeer missed noticing that Facebook changed its privacy settings, enabling Facebook friends to see certain postings on his site that previously could not be seen by people other than those he allowed to see them. One of the postings was a page linked to a group that supports gay fathers and advocates for ending discrimination against gay parents.
When Katie Mech apparently saw the “gay” link on TerVeer’s Facebook page she wrote him a message saying, “Don’t tell me you’re weird like that,” the lawsuit says. It says TerVeer responded offline by confirming that he was gay but noting that he was not “weird,” the lawsuit says.
According to the lawsuit, from that time going forward John Mach dramatically changed his attitude toward TerVeer in a negative way, leading TerVeer to believe Katie Mach told her father he was gay.
“Now, at the beginning of almost every work-related conversation, Mech would engage in a religious lecture to the point where it became clear that Mech was targeting TerVeer by imposing his conservative Catholic beliefs on TerVeer throughout the workday,” the lawsuit says. “TerVeer proclaims a Christian faith, but one that is accepting of his sexual orientation,” says the lawsuit.
The lawsuit says that on June 21, 2010 Mech called TerVeer into an unscheduled meeting and delivered a stern lecture to “educate” TerVeer on “hell” and the sin of homosexuality.
Mech began reciting Bible verses to TerVeer, the lawsuit says, telling him, “I hope you repent because the Bible is very clear about what God does to homosexuals.” The lawsuit says Mech went on to quote the biblical passage of Leviticus that says, “If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman…they must be put to death.”
TerVeer charges in the lawsuit that Mech, with help from Mech’s supervisor, Nicholas Christopher, “continued to manufacture a negative paper trail” to downgrade TerVeer’s work performance ratings. The lawsuit says this was an effort to justify Mech’s alleged goal of orchestrating TerVeer’s termination from his job.
“TerVeer was subjected to a hostile work environment and continued harassment from Mech based upon religious affiliation, sex stereotyping, and sexual orientation,” the lawsuit says. Christopher, Mech, and other supervisors failed to inform TerVeer of his right to file a discrimination claim and retaliated against TerVeer because he sought to and ultimately did file a discrimination claim, the suit says.
“The work environment became too hostile for TerVeer to continue working under Mech or Christopher’s supervision, and his requests for transfer were denied,” the lawsuit says. “TerVeer was constructively terminated on April 6, 2012 because he was unable to return to a workplace where he had to confront constant discriminatory treatment from Mech and Christopher.”
The suit calls for injunctive relief, including reinstatement and an “order restraining defendant from engaging in further discriminatory conduct…”
It calls for back pay, compensatory and punitive damages, including for emotional distress, and reimbursement for attorneys’ fees and other court related costs. The suit doesn’t seek a specific dollar amount for damages and compensation and other costs, saying the amounts would be determined at trial.
The White House
Trump tells Fox News he won the ‘gay vote’ — but polls tell a different story
Trump falsely claims LGBTQ support on Fox despite polling showing overwhelming opposition.
President Donald Trump claimed he won the “gay vote” in 2024, despite evidence showing otherwise.
While appearing by phone on Fox News’s panel show “The Five” on Thursday, Trump falsely claimed he performed particularly well among gay voters while discussing the ongoing war in Iran — a conflict he initiated without formal congressional approval.
“Now I think I did very well with the gay vote, OK? I even played the gay national anthem as my walk-off, OK?” Trump said on air.
“And I think it probably helped me. But I did great. No Republican’s ever gotten the gay vote like I did and I’m very proud of it, I think it’s great. Perhaps it’s because I’m from New York City, I don’t know…”
His claim contradicts 2024 polling from NBC News, which found that the GOP presidential ticket captured fewer than 1 in 5 LGBTQ male voters — a figure that may also include bisexual and transgender men. Trump’s support among LGBTQ female voters was even lower, at just 8%.
White LGBTQ voters favored Vice President Kamala Harris over Trump by a margin of 82% to 16%, while LGBTQ voters of color backed Harris by an even wider 91% to 5%.
Trump also used the appearance to criticize “Gays for Palestine,” saying: “Look at ‘Gays for Palestine’… they kill gays, they kill them instantly, they throw them off buildings, and I’m saying, ‘Who are the gays for Palestine?’”
He further pointed to his campaign’s use of the song “Y.M.C.A.” by the Village People — which he has repeatedly described as a “gay national anthem” — noting that it was frequently used as a walk-off song at rallies, as an indication that he and his campaign were supported by the gay community. The track, long associated with camp and hyper-masculine gay imagery, became a staple of Trump campaign events.
The Village People were later booked to perform at Turning Point USA’s inaugural ball celebrating Trump’s second inauguration. Lead singer Victor Willis previously criticized Trump’s use of the song dating back to 2020 and considered legal action to block it, but ultimately said there was “not much he can do about it.” He later acknowledged the renewed exposure was “beneficial” and “good for business,” boosting the song’s popularity and chart performance.
Despite Trump’s claims of strong support from gay voters, polling has consistently shown otherwise — even as several prominent gay men have held roles in or around his orbit, sometimes dubbed the “A-gays.” These include Richard Grenell, former executive director of the Kennedy Center and Special Presidential Envoy for Special Missions; Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent; Under Secretary of State Jacob Helberg; Department of Energy official Charles T. Moran; and longtime supporter Peter Thiel, co-founder and CEO of Palantir.
His efforts to portray himself as aligned with the gay community stand in conflict with policies advanced under his leadership. These include removing LGBTQ-related data from State Department reports, attempting to narrowly redefine gender identity in federal policy, restricting access to gender-affirming health care, and rolling back anti-discrimination protections. His administration also rescinded initiatives focused on LGBTQ health equity, data collection, and nondiscrimination in health care and education — moves advocates say contribute to stigma and worsen mental health outcomes.
Additionally, some HIV programs and community health centers have lost funding from the federal government after supporting initiatives inclusive of transgender people as a direct result of Trump-Vance policies.
National
Anti-trans visa ruling echoes Nazi regime destroying trans documents
Trump administration escalates attacks on queer community
The Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention and Human Security earlier this month released its third Red Flag Alert for the United States about the Trump administration’s anti-trans legislation. As the Lemkin Institute shared in the press release, “the Administration has moved from identifying transgender people as as threat to the family and to the nation’s military prowess to claiming that transgender people constitute a cosmic threat to the spiritual health of the nation and the great direct threat to the US national security in the world.”
The news came the same day that the State Department issued a new rule, “Enhancing Vetting and Combatting Fraud in the Immigrant Visa Program.” Under this new guidance, all visa applicants are required to disclose their “biological sex at birth” during all stages of the process, “even if that differs from the sex listed on the applicant’s foreign passport or identifying documentation.”
This rule also orders that applicants to the green card lottery program share their passport information, so in knowingly collecting passport information that the agency knows will not match a person’s biological sex at birth, it’s creating grounds to deny trans peoples’ biases on the basis of “fraud,” Aleksandra Vaca of Transitics explains.
As is written in the new ruling, “the Department is replacing ‘gender’ with ‘sex’ in accordance with E.O. 14168, Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government, which provides that the term ‘sex’ shall refer to an individual’s sex at birth. Only male and female sex options are available for entrants completing the Diversity Visa entry form.”
Along with outright denying the existence of nonbinary, genderqueer and gender expansive people, this policy creates a precedence for trans people to be stripped of their visas and deported because under 8 U.S.C. § 1182(a)(6)(C)(i), any foreigner found to have obtained or possess a visa “by fraud or willfully misrepresenting a material fact” will have their visa revoked and face deportation.
By requesting information on “biological sex at birth,” the State Department is forcing a mismatch between documents and enabling officials to accuse trans, nonbinary, and gender expansive immigrants of fraud. Thus, trans and nonbinary immigrants can have their visas revoked and can be deported, and information gathered from immigrants during the visa request process can be added to federal databases and used by immigration authorities, including ICE agents.
With the Supreme Court’s decision this past year allowing ICE officers to use racial profiling, Vaca argues that “now, The Trump administration has given ICE the reason it needs. Under this rule, ICE agents now have the enforcement rationale to assert that trans people–especially those belonging to racial minority groups–are more likely than cis people to have ‘misrepresented’ themselves during the visa process, and therefore, are more likely to enter the country ‘unlawfully.’”
This would enable ICE agents to target trans individuals specifically for being trans. If the goal of this were unclear, a day later the Trump administration released its statement for Women’s History Month 2026, writing that “we are keeping men out of women’s sports, enforcing Title IX as it was originally written and ensuring colleges preserve–and, where possible, expand–scholarships and roster opportunities for female athletes. We are restoring public safety and upholding the rule of law in every city so women, children, and families can feel safe and secure.”
And this is not the first time that ICE has targeted and harmed trans and nonbinary immigrants. Last June, Vera reported that ICE is not including trans people in detection in their public reports, and back in 2020, AFSC reported that trans people held in ICE detention faced “dreadful, ugly” conditions.
While it seems like a new development in Trump’s anti-trans escalation, it echoes a deeply upsetting history of denying and destroying transgender people’s documents following members of the Nazi party seizing power in 1933.
In the early 20th century, Weimar, Germany was an epicenter for gender affirming care with Maganus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science. One of the first book burnings of the rising Nazi regime destroyed the Institute’s extensive clinical records and library on trans health and history by Nazi students and stormtroopers. In doing so, the Nazis effectively destroyed the world’s first trans health clinic and one of the richest and most comprehensive collective of information about trans healthcare.
Similarly, the Nazi government invalidated or refused to recognize what was called “transvestite passes,” or passing certificates that allowed trans people to avoid arrest under Paragraph 175 which prohibited cross-dressing. During the Weimar Republic — the regime that preceded the Third Reich — recognized and affirmed the identities of trans people (in limited ways) with specific documentation that helped prevent them from arrest. Invalidating and disregarding these passes allowed police and Nazi officials to target trans people and harass, extort and arrest them, and the record of passes themselves helped officials target trans people.
The changes to visa guidelines — alongside Kansas’s move to revoke trans drivers’ licenses last month — is reflective of this escalation of violence against trans people during the Nazi’s rise to power, which scholars like Dr. Laurie Marhoefer is just beginning to uncover. And along with the revocation of identification documents this past week, a recent Fourth Circuit Court ruled that states can deny Medicaid coverage for gender-affirming surgery.
The Fourth Circuit Court decision affirmed the Supreme Court’s decision in Skrmetti, which ruled that bans on gender affirming healthcare for young people are constitutional. This ruling extends this ban to include adult healthcare bans, allowing West Virginia’s exclusion of Medicaid coverage for adult gender affirming healthcare to take full effect. Even more upsetting was what the ruling itself said, calling gender affirming healthcare “dangerous.”
As was written in the Fourth Circuit Opinion, “it’s not irrational for a legislature to encourage citizens ‘to appreciate their sex’ and not ‘become disdainful of their sex’ by refusing to fund experimental procedures that may have the opposite effect.”
In reality, what this ruling and the opinion reflect, is the next step in government regulation and oversight over marginalized peoples’ bodies. From the overturn of Roe v. Wade, which removed federal protection of access to abortion, this next step represents the denial of people’s access to vital, lifesaving care–and to be clear, gender affirming care is not just for trans, nonbinary, and intersex people. It’s a dangerous escalation and one that echoes previous violence against trans people under fascist regimes; the Lemkin Institute is right to raise concern.
Pennsylvania
Pa. House passes bill to codify marriage equality in state law
Governor supports gay state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta’s measure
The Pennsylvania House of Representatives on Wednesday passed a bill that would codify marriage equality in state law.
House Bill 1800 passed by a 127-72 vote margin. Twenty-six Republicans voted for the measure.
The Republican-controlled Pennsylvania Senate will now consider the bill that state Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta (D-Philadelphia), who is the first openly gay person of color elected to the state’s General Assembly, introduced. Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro supports the measure.
“Here in Pennsylvania, we believe in your freedom to marry who you love,” said Shapiro on Wednesday. “Today, the House has stepped up to protect that right.”
BREAKING: The Pennsylvania House just passed @RepKenyatta's bill to codify marriage equality into law in PA — and they did it with broad bipartisan support.
— Governor Josh Shapiro (@GovernorShapiro) March 25, 2026
Here in Pennsylvania, we believe in your freedom to marry who you love. Today, the House has stepped up to protect that…
‘Jonah’ an undeniably compelling but unusual memory play
The Oscar-losing performance that’s too good to miss
Trump tells Fox News he won the ‘gay vote’ — but polls tell a different story
Anti-trans visa ruling echoes Nazi regime destroying trans documents
Japanese Supreme Court to consider marriage equality
D.C. goes gaga for Gaga
Menaka Guruswamy celebrated as India’s first openly LGBTQ MP
HRC to host National Rainbow Seder
UPDATED: Trans-led HIV clinic in Portsmouth struggles amid funding cuts
