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Black pastor against same-sex marriage admits NOM connection

Owens says Obama betrayed civil rights movement

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CAAP, Coalition of African-American Pastors, logo

Black clergy members decried President Obama’s endorsement of same-sex marriage during a news conference on Friday as a betrayal of the black civil rights movement as they admitted limited financial ties to the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage.

Rev. William Owens, founder and president of the Coalition of African-American Pastors, held the conference standing along with a group of nearly 30 black religious leaders as part of the organization’s annual leadership summit, which this year took place at the Hyatt Regency in Arlington, Va.

“The president sold us out,” Owens said. “He is in the White House because of the civil rights movement and mainly because of the African-American community, who voted for him 97 percent to be president. He sold us out for money — no other way. The African-American community represents 13 percent of the population, the gay and lesbian community represents three percent. So it wasn’t for the votes; it was for the money. I called him Judas then, and I call him Judas now.”

Saying Obama was elected on the backs of slave laborers and the civil rights movement, Owens said any president who would be first black man in office and endorse same-sex marriage deserves to be kicked out. Later, under questioning from reporters, Owens said his organization wasn’t making an endorsement of any candidate in the election.

In the wake of internal documents from NOM leaked earlier this year, Owens was asked by CNN’s Dan Merica about having a connection with the anti-gay group. The pastor confirmed the anti-gay group compensates him.

“They pay my salary,” Owens said. “My wife … has an earned doctorate from Vanderbilt University and I have three degrees, we make a combined salary of $20,000 a year because they were kind enough to pick us up, because we did not have funds, and they said we can put you in the budget for $20,000. So we are in relationship with them and I’m very proud of it.”

Internal memos leaked earlier this year revealed the organization planned to divide blacks and gays within the Democratic Party using same-sex marriage as a “wedge” issue. Owens defended NOM against any wrongdoing.

“I read that; I know of the story,” Owens said. “But I work with the National Organization for Marriage and I’ll defend them, I will defend them, I will defend them. I don’t know what they said; I wasn’t there. But I know their hearts.”

In a follow-up question from CNN on whether he’s a tool for message, Owens replied, “I’m nobody’s tool. Bill Owens is nobody’s tool. They’ve never tried to use me as a tool. They have helped me because I asked for it. I went to them. They didn’t come to me. I went to them and asked them to help us because we needed help. I’m nobody’s tool.”

The news conference was held in coordination with NOM, but no one directly affiliated with the organization was before or near the podium. Brian Brown, NOM’s president, stood in the back the room as the news conference proceeded. Asked by the Washington Blade why Brown was absent from the podium, Owens said the conference was an opportunity to show that his organization is “black-led.”

Speaking with the Blade after the news conference, Brown denied that Owens’ motives for speaking at the news conference were financially based, but acknowledged his organization had donated to Owens about $20,000.

“It’s ridiculous,” Brown said. “Rev. Owens was already doing what was doing before he came to us and asked us for help. Obviously, as a coalition, we’re going to help as many partners as possible. The Human Rights Campaign does the same thing. But these folks were already out there. I’ve seen Bishop Owens at a number of rallies; we’ve worked together in the past and was already doing his thing before NOM ever got involved.”

The conference happened at the exact time as a news conference took place at the National Press Club in D.C. where other black clergy members — including Rev. Al Sharpton — spoke favorably about same-sex marriage and the need to uphold the same-sex marriage law at the ballot in November.

Asked by a reporter about Sharpton and whether good people of faith can disagree, Owens replied, “Of course, good people of faith, but I don’t think they’re disagreeing from a faith position. I wonder if they have any. … They faith in something, but I don’t believe it’s God.”

Michael Cole-Schwartz, a Human Rights Campaign spokesperson, drew on the opposing conference at the National Press Club as evidence that the conference from the NOM-sponsored organization doesn’t reflect the views of black Americans.

“NOM continues to divide American along racial lines but the fact of the matter is that a growing coalition of Americans of all identities are coming to the conclusion that there’s no good reason to exclude gay and lesbian couples from marriage,” Cole-Schwartz said. “The array of African-American ministers speaking out for marriage equality in Maryland today is proof positive of the turning tide.”

During the news conference, Owens said he’s spoken out against same-sex marriage in every state for several years where it’s come to the ballot and announced a campaign starting in North Carolina on Oct. 7 where he would travel swing states in the presidential election — including Ohio, Virginia and Pennsylvania — to talk about limiting marriage to one man, one woman.

“In every state where it has been on the ballot, the African-American community has voted way ahead of the other population standing for marriage between a man and a woman,” Owens said. “Certain politicians have taken it on themselves to decide that it’s OK, it’s already for a man to marry a man and a woman to marry a woman, and we disagree, and we stand and we fight for what the Bible says.”

For Proposition 8, exit polls showed black California residents voted at a higher rate than other groups in favor of the measure, but those numbers have been refuted by reports that followed. While Owens touted the importance of the black civil rights movement, according to a report in The Huffington Post, little evidence exists suggesting he had a role in those efforts.

Pastors who were before the podium tied their to same-sex marriage to the economic challenges facing black people in the United States, which has been shown endure higher employment and lower education than others during the recession facing the economy.

Bishop David Hall, prelate of the First Jurisdiction of Western Tennessee and pastor of the Temple Church God of Christ, warned that “marriage and human sexuality should not be subject to or governed by the whims and feelings of special interest groups or politicians” while later speaking out against the economic plight of black Americans.

“The moral principles which represent God have been denigrated by political philosophies, special interest and weakened metaphors,” Hall said. “The godly morality has been replaced by political expediency. CAAP is tired of status quo and the statistical evidence that places blacks at the bottom. Blacks suffer from the lowest educational opportunities, highest recidivism, highest out of marriage pregnancies, etc. It is time for a revival. We need change in our homes, communities and institutions.”

Others who spoke at the news conference against same-sex marriage included Alveda King, the niece of the civil right leaders Martin Luther King, Jr.; and Lewis Ford, brother to former U.S. House Rep. Harold Ford of Tennessee; and Rev. Dean Nelson, vice chair of the Frederick Douglass Foundation.

Pastor Stephen Broden, a Republican who once ran against incumbent Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Texas), expressed concerned about the legalization of same-sex marriage for what he said was taking the country away from its religious roots.

“The definition of marriage is under assault by cultural progressive ideologues,” Broden said. “Make no mistake about it — this is an attempt to flip our nation away from its Judeo-Christian heritage and replace it with a godless paradigm that sourced in human secularism. These people seek to dispossess this nation of its Judeo-Christian values, and what we are witnessing is a titanic clash between two world views: the godless human secularism against Judeo-Christian Christianity. We can not, we must not sit quietly and allow these ideologues to determine our values.”

The Washington Blade noted the case of Loving v. Virginia, which allowed interracial marriage in the country, is often considered parallel to the efforts to legalize same-sex marriage, but Owens denied any similarities.

“There is no parallels because it was a racist scene; America was racist,” Owens said. “I had white friends when they first stated integration, and they were truly good people, and we were laughing, we were talking, but when they were around other white people, they’d acted like didn’t know me. So it was racist. This has nothing to do with race.”

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Federal Government

Treasury Department has a gay secretary but LGBTQ staff are under siege

Agency reverses course on LGBTQ inclusion under out Secretary Scott Bessent

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U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

A former Treasury Department employee who led the agency’s LGBTQ employee resource group says the removal of sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) from its discrimination complaint forms was merely a formalization of existing policy shifts that had already taken hold following the second inauguration of President Donald Trump and his appointment of Scott Bessent — who is gay — to lead the agency. 

Christen Boas Hayes, who served on the policy team at Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) from 2020 until March of this year, told the Washington Blade during a phone interview last week that the agency had already stopped processing internal Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) complaints on the basis of anti-LGBTQ discrimination. 

“So the way that the forms are changing is a procedural recognition of something that’s already happening,” said Hayes. “Internally, from speaking to two EEO staff members, the changes are already taking place from an EEO perspective on what kind of cases will be found to have the basis for a complaint.”

The move, they said, comes amid the deterioration of support structures for LGBTQ workers at the agency since the administration’s early rollout of anti-LGBTQ executive orders, which led to “a trickle down effect of how each agency implements those and on what timeline,” decisions “typically made by the assistant secretary of management’s office and then implemented by the appropriate offices.”

At the end of June, a group of U.S. House Democrats including several out LGBTQ members raised alarms after a Federal Register notice disclosed Treasury’s plans to revise its complaint procedures. Through the agency’s Office of Civil Rights and EEO, the agency would eliminate SOGI as protected categories on the forms used by employees to initiate claims of workplace discrimination.

But Hayes’s account reveals that the paperwork change followed months of internal practice, pursuant to a wave of layoffs targeting DEI personnel and a chilling effect on LGBTQ organizing, including through ERGs. 

Hayes joined Treasury’s FinCEN in 2020 as the agency transitioned into the Biden-Harris administration, working primarily on cryptocurrency regulation and emerging technologies until they accepted a “deferred resignation” offer, which was extended to civil servants this year amid drastic staffing cuts. 

“It was two things,” Hayes said. “One was the fact that the policy work that I was very excited about doing was going to change in nature significantly. The second part was that the environment for LGBTQ staff members was increasingly negative after the release of the executive orders,” especially for trans and nonbinary or gender diverse employees. 

“At the same time,” Hayes added, “having been on the job for four years, I also knew this year was the year that I would leave Treasury. I was a good candidate for [deferred resignation], because I was already planning on leaving, but the pressures that emerged following the change in administration really pushed me to accelerate that timeline.”

Some ERGs die by formal edict, others by a thousand cuts 

Hayes became involved with the Treasury LGBTQ ERG shortly after joining the agency in 2020, when they reached out to the group’s then-president — “who also recently took the deferred resignation.”

“She said that because of the pressure that ERGs had faced under the first Trump administration, the group was rebuilding, and I became the president of the group pretty quickly,” Hayes said. “Those pressures have increased in the second Trump administration.”

One of the previous ERG board members had left the agency after encountering what Hayes described as “explicitly transphobic” treatment from supervisors during his gender transition. “His supervisors denied him a promotion,” and, “importantly, he did not have faith in the EEO complaint process” to see the issues with discrimination resolved, Hayes said. “And so he decided to just leave, which was, of course, such a loss for Treasury and our Employee Resource Group and all of our employees at Treasury.”

The umbrella LGBTQ ERG that Hayes led included hundreds of members across the agency, they said, and was complemented by smaller ERGs at sub-agencies like the IRS and FinCEN — several of which, Hayes said, were explicitly told to cease operations under the new administration.

Hayes did not receive any formal directive to shutter Treasury’s ERG, but described an “implicit” messaging campaign meant to shut down the group’s activities without issuing anything in writing.

“The suggestion was to stop emailing about anything related to the employee resource group, to have meetings outside of work hours, to meet off of Treasury’s campus, and things like that,” they said. “So obviously that contributes to essentially not existing functionally. Because whereas we could have previously emailed our members comfortably to announce a happy hour or a training or something like that, now they have to text each other personally to gather, which essentially makes it a defunct group.”

Internal directories scrubbed, gender-neutral restrooms removed

Hayes said the dismantling of DEI staff began almost immediately after the executive orders. Employees whose position descriptions included the terms “diversity, equity, and inclusion” were “on the chopping block,” they said. “That may differ from more statutorily mandated positions in the OMWI office or the EEO office.”

With those staff gone, so went the infrastructure that enabled ERG programming and community-building. “The people that made our employee resource group events possible were DEI staff that were fired. And so, it created an immediate chilling effect on our employee resource group, and it also, of course, put fear into a lot of our members’ hearts over whether or not we would be able to continue gathering as a community or supporting employees in a more practical way going forward. And it was just, really — it was really sad.”

Hayes described efforts to erase the ERGs from internal communication channels and databases. “They also took our information off internal websites so nobody could find us as lawyers went through the agency’s internal systems to scrub DEI language and programs,” they said.

Within a week, Hayes said, the administration had removed gender-neutral restrooms from Main Treasury, removed third-gender markers from internal databases and forms, and made it more difficult for employees with nonbinary IDs to access government buildings.

“[They] made it challenging for people with X gender markers on identification documents to access Treasury or the White House by not recognizing their gender marker on the TWAVES and WAVES forms.”

LGBTQ staff lack support and work amid a climate of isolation 

The changes have left many LGBTQ staff feeling vulnerable — not only because of diminished workplace inclusion, but due to concerns about job security amid the administration’s reductions in force (RIFs).

“Plenty of people are feeling very stressed, not only about retaining their jobs because of the layoffs and pending questions around RIFs, but then also wondering if they will be included in RIF lists because they’re being penalized somehow for being out at work,” Hayes said. “People wonder if their name will be given, not because they’re in a tranche of billets being laid off, but because of their gender identity or sexual orientation.”

In the absence of functional ERGs, Hayes said, LGBTQ employees have been cut off from even informal networks of support.

“Employees [are] feeling like it’s harder to find members of their own community because there’s no email anymore to ask when the next event is or to ask about navigating healthcare or other questions,” they said. “If there is no ERG to go to to ask for support for their specific issue, that contributes to isolation, which contributes to a worse work environment.”

Hayes said they had not interacted directly with Secretary Bessent, but they and others observed a shift from the previous administration. “It is stark to see that our first ‘out’ secretary did not host a Pride event this year,” they said. “For the last three years we’ve flown the rainbow Pride flag above Treasury during Pride. And it was such a celebration among staff and Secretary Yellen and the executive secretary’s office were super supportive.”

“Employees notice changes like that,” they added. “Things like the fact that the Secretary’s official bio says ‘spouse’ instead of ‘husband.’ It makes employees wonder if they too should be fearful of being their full selves at work.”

The Blade contacted the Treasury Department with a request for comment outlining Hayes’s allegations, including the removal of inclusive infrastructure, the discouragement of ERG activity, the pre-formalization of EEO policy changes, and the targeting of DEI personnel. As of publication, the agency has not responded.

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U.S. Supreme Court

Supreme Court to consider bans on trans athletes in school sports

27 states have passed laws limiting participation in athletics programs

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U.S. Supreme Court (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday agreed to hear two cases involving transgender youth challenging bans prohibiting them from participating in school sports.

In Little v. Hecox, plaintiffs represented by the ACLU, Legal Voice, and the law firm Cooley are challenging Idaho’s 2020 ban, which requires sex testing to adjudicate questions of an athlete’s eligibility.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals described the process in a 2023 decision halting the policy’s enforcement pending an outcome in the litigation. The “sex dispute verification process, whereby any individual can ‘dispute’ the sex of any female student athlete in the state of Idaho,” the court wrote, would “require her to undergo intrusive medical procedures to verify her sex, including gynecological exams.”

In West Virginia v. B.P.J., Lambda Legal, the ACLU, the ACLU of West Virginia, and Cooley are representing a trans middle school student challenging the Mountain State’s 2021 ban on trans athletes.

The plaintiff was participating in cross country when the law was passed, taking puberty blockers that would have significantly reduced the chances that she could have a physiological advantage over cisgender peers.

“Like any other educational program, school athletic programs should be accessible for everyone regardless of their sex or transgender status,” said Joshua Block, senior counsel for the ACLU’s LGBTQ and HIV Project. “Trans kids play sports for the same reasons their peers do — to learn perseverance, dedication, teamwork, and to simply have fun with their friends,” Block said.

He added, “Categorically excluding kids from school sports just because they are transgender will only make our schools less safe and more hurtful places for all youth. We believe the lower courts were right to block these discriminatory laws, and we will continue to defend the freedom of all kids to play.”

“Our client just wants to play sports with her friends and peers,” said Lambda Legal Senior Counsel Tara Borelli. “Everyone understands the value of participating in team athletics, for fitness, leadership, socialization, and myriad other benefits.”

Borelli continued, “The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit last April issued a thoughtful and thorough ruling allowing B.P.J. to continue participating in track events. That well-reasoned decision should stand the test of time, and we stand ready to defend it.”

Shortly after taking control of both legislative chambers, Republican members of Congress tried — unsuccessfully — to pass a national ban like those now enforced in 27 states since 2020.

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Federal Government

UPenn erases Lia Thomas’s records as part of settlement with White House

University agreed to ban trans women from women’s sports teams

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U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon (Screen capture: C-SPAN)

In a settlement with the Trump-Vance administration announced on Tuesday, the University of Pennsylvania will ban transgender athletes from competing and erase swimming records set by transgender former student Lia Thomas.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights found the university in violation of Title IX, the federal rights law barring sex based discrimination in educational institutions, by “permitting males to compete in women’s intercollegiate athletics and to occupy women-only intimate facilities.”

The statement issued by University of Pennsylvania President J. Larry Jameson highlighted how the law’s interpretation was changed substantially under President Donald Trump’s second term.

“The Department of Education OCR investigated the participation of one transgender athlete on the women’s swimming team three years ago, during the 2021-2022 swim season,” he wrote. “At that time, Penn was in compliance with NCAA eligibility rules and Title IX as then interpreted.”

Jameson continued, “Penn has always followed — and continues to follow — Title IX and the applicable policy of the NCAA regarding transgender athletes. NCAA eligibility rules changed in February 2025 with Executive Orders 14168 and 14201 and Penn will continue to adhere to these new rules.”

Writing that “we acknowledge that some student-athletes were disadvantaged by these rules” in place while Thomas was allowed to compete, the university president added, “We recognize this and will apologize to those who experienced a competitive disadvantage or experienced anxiety because of the policies in effect at the time.”

“Today’s resolution agreement with UPenn is yet another example of the Trump effect in action,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement. “Thanks to the leadership of President Trump, UPenn has agreed both to apologize for its past Title IX violations and to ensure that women’s sports are protected at the university for future generations of female athletes.”

Under former President Joe Biden, the department’s Office of Civil Rights sought to protect against anti-LGBTQ discrimination in education, bringing investigations and enforcement actions in cases where school officials might, for example, require trans students to use restrooms and facilities consistent with their birth sex or fail to respond to peer harassment over their gender identity.

Much of the legal reasoning behind the Biden-Harris administration’s positions extended from the 2020 U.S. Supreme Court case Bostock v. Clayton County, which found that sex-based discrimination includes that which is based on sexual orientation or gender identity under Title VII rules covering employment practices.

The Trump-Vance administration last week put the state of California on notice that its trans athlete policies were, or once were, in violation of Title IX, which comes amid the ongoing battle with Maine over the same issue.

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