National
Rising Democratic star delivers fiery speech at HRC dinner
Booker suggests he would sign marriage equality into law as governor
Newark, N.J. Mayor Cory Booker (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
Newark Mayor Cory Booker suggested he’d pursue a gubernatorial run in New Jersey and — if elected — sign marriage equality legislation into law during a fiery keynote speech Saturday evening at the 16th annual Human Rights Campaign National Dinner.
“I’m going to declare right now that the state of New Jersey — with all of the fiber of my being, with my allies left and right — that we will ensure that marriage equality is signed into law in the state of New Jersey,” Booker said. “And when that bill is signed, I may have a very good seat for it.”
It’s not the first time Booker has hinted at a possible gubernatorial run and that he’d lead the way for marriage equality as governor. During the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., Booker made almost identical comments while addressing a caucus meeting of LGBT delegates.
Earlier this year, the New Jersey legislature approved legislation that would legalize marriage for gay couples, but that bill was vetoed by Republican Gov. Chris Christie. LGBT advocates are seeking to override his veto in the legislature.
Booker also told more than 3,000 attendees in attendance at the dinner — held at the Washington Convention Center — that their “spirit” is the same as the spirit that filled others creating social change in the United States, including those that founded the country, led the Underground Railroad that guided slaves to freedom and organized bus boycotts in the South.
“It is the unconquerable spirit that when some of us in our nation were told you aren’t good enough, this spirit stood and said, ‘Yes I am,'” Booker said.
Booker, who gained renown for reducing crime in his city and for personally rescuing a woman in April from a house fire, is considered a rising star in the Democratic Party. The Newark mayor was co-chair of the 2012 Democratic platform committee, which approved for the first time a marriage equality inclusive platform.
Sue Fulton, a lesbian West Point graduate who’s a founding board member of the LGBT military group known as OutServe, attended the dinner and expressed confidence that Booker has a bright future in the party.
“As a New Jerseyan married to a native New Jerseyan, I think Cory Booker is the real deal,” Fulton said. “And what he said tonight — he brought people to their feet, he brought people to tears because he believes down in his bones in real equality in this country and that is so inspiring to me, I can’t wait to see what he’s going to do next.”
Also on stage and providing the introduction to Booker was Chad Griffin, who spoke at the national dinner for the first time in his capacity as president of the nation’s largest LGBT organization.
“We can choose to step back, look at our recent successes, place our trust in the whims of public opinion and simply wait until the institutions of power finally open their doors to our community — or we can choose to be bold, we can choose to fight, fight for the laws we know we need and the welcoming country our families deserve,” Griffin said.
Prior to coming to HRC, Griffin served as board president of the California-based American Foundation for Equal Rights, the organization behind the federal lawsuit against Proposition 8. Others were on the stage from the organization, including the plaintiffs challenging the same-sex marriage ban — a lesbian couple, Kristin Perry and Sandra Steir, and a gay male couple, Paul Katami and Jeffrey Zarrillo — as well as Oscar-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black, an AFER board member.
Black delivered a highly personal speech at the dinner in which told the story of his coming out to a Mormon, military family as well as the coming out story of his gay elder brother, who died just weeks before the lawsuit spearheaded by AFER led the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to rule that Prop 8 was unconstitutional.
“I just wanted to race to the phone and call my big brother and say, ‘My God, we are one step away, we are one step away from the U.S. Supreme Court where my freedom will be your freedom, where my hope is your hope, my liberation is yours, but I couldn’t,” Black said. “I couldn’t because two weeks earlier my brother lost his battle to cancer and he died, and he will never know that feeling of liberation.”
Human Rights Campaign President and CEO Chad Griffin and screenwriter Dustin Lance Black (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
Following Black’s speech, HRC raised at least $390,000 in under 20 minutes by calling on attendees to donate to a campaign for the pro-gay side in the four states where marriage will be on the ballot in November: Maine, Minnesota, Maryland and Washington State. The final numbers were still being tabulated before the article was posted.
HRC gave two awards to special guests at the dinner. The National Equality Award was given to Ben Jealous, president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, for his work that led to 103-year-old organization’s board to endorse marriage equality. The Ally for Equality Award was given to Oscar-winning actress Sally Field.
Sam Greisman, who’s gay and Field’s son from her second marriage, introduced his mother prior to her accepting the award on stage. During her speech, Field discussed how her son found success even though “nature” made him different from his two brothers.
“Sam was given colors and innate perceptions that his big brothers simply don’t have,” Field said. “He’s a gentler nature, and it is a gift. Nature made Sam.”
Among the guests at the dinner who weren’t on stage were gay members of the administration — John Berry, director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, and Fred Hochberg, director of the Export-Import Bank — as well as Brian Bond, DNC national constituency outreach director, and Jamie Citron, Obama for America LGBT National Vote Director.
The 2012 HRC National Dinner is the first one to take place under President Obama in which no one from the administration addressed the audience from the stage. In 2009 and 2011, Obama addressed attendees, while in 2010, Valerie Jarrett, senior adviser to Obama, was the keynote speaker.
Michael Cole-Schwartz, an HRC spokesperson, said no one from the administration spoke on stage because high-level officials were involved with the campaign one month before Election Day, although he said his organization had hoped the president or the first lady would have addressed the crowd.
“We certainly appreciate that the president has joined us for two of the last three national dinners,” Cole-Schwartz said. “While we had hoped he or Mrs. Obama would have been available again this year, between campaigning and their own family responsibilities, it was not possible. We were thrilled to have Obama campaign surrogate Mayor Booker speak and talk about the administration’s many accomplishments for our community.”
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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