Local
O’Malley: We’re going to win in Md.
Governor spoke at HRC’s “Chefs for Equality” fundraiser in D.C. for the Maryland same-sex marriage campaign.
Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley speaks at “Chefs for Equality” fundraiser in D.C. (Washington Blade photo by Ann Little)
Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley said on Wednesday he remains optimistic voters will support his state’s same-sex marriage law on Election Day.
“We’re going to win in Maryland,” he said during the Human Rights Campaign’s “Chefs for Equality” fundraiser at the Ritz-Carlton in Foggy Bottom that raised money for pro-Question 6 efforts.
O’Malley, who signed the state’s same-sex marriage law in March, stressed the campaign is $500,000 short of “securing marriage equality in Maryland at the ballot” on Nov. 6. This figure comes nearly two weeks after Marylanders for Marriage Equality reported in its campaign finance report that it had raised nearly $3.3 million.
Josh Levin, the group’s campaign director, told the Washington Blade on Oct. 12 “this is a $5 million-plus campaign and [we] hope to meet that goal as we enter the final stretch.”
“Never before have the people of one state affirmed the dignity of every individual, the importance of protecting under the law equally every child’s home until this upcoming election,” said O’Malley to those who attended the fundraiser that Tim Gunn of “Project Runway” emceed. “Your presence here tonight can be the difference of whether we succeed or whether we fail. We have raised a lot of dollars and now we are running ahead, but we have seen this before.”
HRC President Chad Griffin urged those who attended the fundraiser not to become complacent in the final days leading up to the Nov. 6 referendum.
“I come here from California. I lived through Proposition 8 where we saw our numbers evaporate at the end,” he said. “Because of what the opposition does — they come in late and they come in with their millions and it’s where they use their funds: to pour advertising dollars on television and mail into your mail into your mailbox and calls onto your voice mail. They’re irritating as hell. They’re lies, and they’re scare tactics, but it’s too late for us to counter it. Well this time we’re ready for it, but we can’t slow down. We can’t let up. In these next 13 days, we have got to contribute and raise everything we can. We’ve got to make every phone call we can and we’ve got to knock on every single door we can and not rest until the last vote is counted in Maryland.”
The amount of money raised during the fundraiser that featured food, cocktails and desserts from dozens of local chefs and bartenders was not immediately available. HRC has given more than $1 million in cash and in-kind donations to the pro-Question 6 campaign, including two $150,000 contributions made to Marylanders for Marriage Equality and the NAACP Maryland Marriage PAC on Oct. 15.
A Washington Post poll published on Oct. 18 found 52 percent of Maryland voters support Question 6, compared to 42 percent who said they oppose it.
Chevy Chase resident Susie Gelman and her husband hosted a Marylanders for Marriage Equality fundraiser at their home in July that raised $250,000. She said the issue of marriage rights for same-sex couples became personal when her son could not marry his partner in Maryland last summer.
“I realized that I needed to do my part to make sure that no other son or daughter of Maryland could be denied a basic civil right,” said Gelman.
Gunn, who grew up in D.C. and attended the Corcoran College of Art and Design, told the Blade during the fundraiser he feels same-sex couples should have the ability to marry in every state.
“I profoundly believe it should be a Supreme Court issue, but it’s not yet. And hopefully it would be,” he said. “For me there’s something of a metaphor about marriage equality in Maryland being on the ballot with these two polarities of presidential candidates. And we know what we need to do.”
Gunn added he remains somewhat hopeful Question 6 will pass.
“I almost get tearful about this: I’d like to be very optimistic. I just hope people come out and vote,” he said. “I think there’s a lot of — I wouldn’t even call it complacency. There’s a feeling of well so-and-so will do this. So-and-so will vote. You have to show up and shine and do your civic responsibility. It’s part of navigating this world and being a citizen of this nation. It’s so critically important.”
Tim Gunn of “Project Runway” emcees HRC’s “Chefs for Equality” fundraiser (Washington Blade photo by Ann Little)
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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