National
Bay Buchanan tells gay audience Romney will win
Ignores LGBT issues in speech to GOProud conservatives
Republican strategist Bay Buchanan (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
Republican strategist Bay Buchanan urged an audience of gay conservatives on Monday to remain optimistic that Mitt Romney will win the presidential race.
“We have the message,” Buchanan said. “We have the candidate, we now have the momentum and the energy and the excitement on our side, and the undecideds are breaking our way.”
Buchanan addressed a crowd of about 65 at the Hotel Monaco in D.C. during the gay conservative group GOProud’s “Unity” event, which was aimed at building support for Romney a month prior to the election.
Blaming the media for the polling disparities between Obama and Romney — which were heightened after the release of the “47 percent” video — Buchanan said, “There were some mistakes on our part, and they managed to do their best to make it much worse than it really was.”
But Buchanan, a senior adviser to the Romney campaign, said polls are narrowing thanks to the Romney campaign’s engagement with the local media across the country and Romney’s performance in the first presidential debate last week.
“At each question, he had such a command of the issue, and the way he spoke, it was clear he is also a caring man,” Buchanan said. “He is concerned, but he also happens to be perfectly competent, clear in thought, understands the issues, has some answers out there and he truly has the kind of courage necessary to do the job that is necessary to put Americans back to work.”
Buchanan also disparaged Obama’s performance during the debate, saying, “You got to give the guy a break. Can you imagine an hour-and-a-half of trying to defend that record?” The audience responded with peals of laughter.
No explicit mention of LGBT issues was made during the speech, but Buchanan conveyed a sense of solidarity with the audience of gay conservatives over the issue of the economy.
“The economy and jobs is the most serious issue the country faces, and we face these issues together,” Buchanan said.
Prior to her remarks, Buchanan refused to take questions from the Washington Blade. She shook hands after her speech with a number of attendees in the room who thanked her for her work.
Buchanan’s attendance at the event was noteworthy because she managed the three presidential campaigns of her brother Pat Buchanan, who in his 1992 speech before the Republican National Convention said the GOP stands with then President George H.W. Bush against the “amoral idea that gay and lesbian couples should have the same standing in law as married men and women.”
Just in May on CBS’ “Face the Nation,” Buchanan responded negatively to President Obama’s endorsement of same-sex marriage, saying the move would be politically costly for Democrats in battleground states.
“They have trouble, we now have Mitt Romney, who’s always been opposed to gay marriage, I might add,” Buchanan said at the time. “But that is where America is. You have 32 states out there who have banned it. They have never won on the ballot. And so what happens in North Carolina now? This is great in Iowa, in several states, but 32 of them are with us. I think it’s no question if this was good politics for Barack Obama, he’d have done it a long time ago. He wouldn’t have been dragged kicking and screaming to do this.”
But the audience seemed largely unconcerned about Buchanan’s position on LGBT issues or the lack of any mention of them.
Jose Romero, 34, a gay D.C. resident, said he came to the event because “it’s time for a change” and after four years of the Obama administration “people aren’t in a better place than they were four years ago.”
“I think everyone has their own issues that are important to them and not everyone’s No. 1 issue is getting married,” Romero said. “The economy, international politics, those types of issues are more important, I think, to some people than others.”
GOProud Executive Director Jimmy LaSalvia (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)
Jimmy LaSalvia, GOProud’s executive director, introduced Buchanan, reminding them his organization is the only national gay organization to endorse Romney because “on issue after issue, a Romney administration would be better for gay Americans, indeed all Americans.”
“Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan understand the single most important issue facing this country right now is the issue of jobs and the economy,” LaSalvia said. “President Obama wants to run this race on social issues. He talks about abortion and gay marriage and contraception — anything that distracts from his failed record on jobs and the economy.”
LaSalvia praised Romney’s performance in the debate last week, saying Romney exemplified the conservative approach to economic prosperity, while Obama was “stammering and stuttering to defend his record.”
But LaSalvia also explained that the presidential race is one of three key races in which his organization has issued endorsements. The GOProud chief touted his organization’s endorsement of Tommy Thompson in the U.S. Senate race in Wisconsin against lesbian Tammy Baldwin as well as Linda McMahon in the U.S. Senate race in Connecticut, who on Sunday came out for repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act. Additional endorsements, LaSalvia said, will be made in coming weeks.
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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